Community Corner

Wheaton Rabbi Admits to Torah Fraud

Prosecutors said that Rabbi Menachem Youlus siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars from his Save a Torah charity.

 

Rabbi Menachem Youlus, who called himself the “Jewish Indiana Jones,” pleaded guilty last week to defrauding more than 50 people by passing off local scrolls as Holocaust-era Torahs.

The Washington Post reported that Youlus, a co-owner of in Wheaton, admitted selling these fake Torahs and stealing more than $862,000 through his non-profit organization Save a Torah.

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According to the New York Times, Youlus "claimed that he had traveled through Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine in search of old Torahs and recovered some from the sites of former concentration camps like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen."

But in court on Feb. 2, Youlus confessed all.

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