Seth Levine: Jewish Conman and Fraudster

Recently I came across yet another case of jewish con artist and fraudster who pled guilty to the charges from the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2021 that I thought was quite interesting.

Said jew’s name is Seth P. Levine and his background is – you guessed it – as a lawyer.

To quote the SEC’s 18th March 2021 filing against Levine:

‘The SEC's complaint alleges that Seth P. Levine, the president and owner of Norse Holdings, LLC, a real estate investment and management company, sold membership interests in limited liability companies that purchased and owned apartment complexes. According to the complaint, from at least February 2015 through August 2019, Levine raised millions of dollars from more than 60 investors, including family, friends, and other investors, many of whom belonged to the Orthodox Jewish community. In offering the interests, Levine allegedly used misleading and false representations that masked Norse Holdings' underlying financial problems and its inability to pay promised returns without using new investor monies or proceeds from a related mortgage fraud. Specifically, the complaint alleges that Levine provided investors with documents reflecting false and inaccurate information concerning the profitability of the apartment complexes; sold overlapping ownership interests to investors using false operating agreements and, at times, forged signatures; frequently commingled investor funds to prop up real estate holdings that were struggling; and paid investors with fake profits generated by the mortgage fraud Levine conducted using the same properties.’ (1)

The Justice Department also issued a long press release on Levine after he was sentenced to just over eight years in prison for these offenses in 2022, which is worth quoting at length:

‘Seth Levine, 53, of Teaneck, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty by videoconference before U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo to an information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and one count of securities fraud. U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton imposed the sentence today in Newark federal court.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

Levine was the founding partner, owner, and managing member of Norse Holdings, which was the parent company to more than 70 subsidiary companies. Each of the subsidiary companies owned one or more multifamily buildings, located primarily in New Jersey. From 2009 through August 2019, Levine directed a scheme to fraudulently refinance the multifamily properties by providing materially false information to financial institutions about the rents collected, the number of apartments leased, the expenses, and the true owners of the properties. Levine and others provided lenders fake documents, including falsified leases that created the appearance that vacant spaces were occupied and that overstated the rent paid by tenants; fake personal financial statements; fake expense documents; and fake operating agreements that misrepresented ownership interests in the multifamily properties. Levine also forged signatures on some of the fraudulent documents submitted to lenders. As a result of the fraudulent refinances, Levine received cash payouts from the lenders, which Levine and others used for their own enrichment and to continue the fraud scheme.

Many of the lenders who approved mortgages based on the false statements of Levine and others in turn sold those mortgages to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) and the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae). Because the refinances were obtained with fraudulent data regarding the properties’ income and expenses, the multifamily properties were overvalued and rents and other income from the properties did not cover the mortgage payments and other expenses associated with the properties. To cover the shortfalls, Levine obtained additional cash-out refinances, thereby increasing his total debt incurred. In total, Levine controlled at least 70 multifamily properties, comprising approximately 2,500 apartments. At the time the fraud was discovered, the outstanding balance of the fraudulently obtained mortgages on the multifamily properties was more than $150 million, including 40 mortgages held by Freddie Mac with an outstanding loan balance of approximately $103 million. At the time of sentencing, the bank fraud conspiracy resulted in losses to victim lenders of at least $47 million.

While defrauding the lending financial institutions, Levine also carried out a securities fraud scheme to defraud investors in the multifamily properties. He solicited investors to invest in the multifamily properties based on materially false statements and promises about the condition of the properties and the use of investor funds. Levine represented to investors that his conduct would be limited by an operating agreement. However, after Levine acquired the multifamily properties, he violated representations made to the investors, including by selling off portions of Levine’s ownership interest in the properties without investor consent, bringing on additional investors without consent, and refinancing the multifamily properties without investor consent. Levine provided fraudulent documents to investors, such as operating agreements that overstated Levine’s personal investment in the multifamily properties and documents bearing signatures forged by Levine. He also co-mingled investor funds and used the funds in violation of representations to investors, by using investor money to support other multifamily properties, make payments to other investors, and further the fraud. At the time of sentencing, the securities fraud victims lost more than $13 million.’ (2)

Now normally jewish conmen and fraudsters tend to get away with what they do with light sentences – often of less than 3-5 years and sometimes with no custodial time at all when they plead guilty and cut a deal as Levine did - more often than not, but Levine is a good example of what changes when jews defraud other jews; who seem to have been Levine’s main targets.

Another example is Bernie Madoff who was gaoled in 2009 for 150 years in prison likely not because he’d almost single-handedly destroyed the US economy, but because he had wiped out a large portion of the jewish community’s wealth – (3) which was invested in his $65 billion Ponzi scheme and thus was rendered non-existent overnight when it collapsed in 2008 – which also nearly bankrupted Yeshiva University (4) and did bankrupt jewish-owned banking giant Lehman Brothers among other companies. (5)

This is because in essence what both Levine and Madoff did was violate the cardinal rule of jewish moneylending as expressed in the Book of Deuteronomy:

‘You may charge a foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite, so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything you put your hand to in the land you are entering to possess.’ (6)

This rule is called the prohibition of ribit in Judaism, which is incidentally where Islam gets its word for usury: ‘riba’.

Now the interesting thing about ribit is that – as with most things in Judaism – it looks superficially harmless until you dig into the logic; since ribit does not just apply to loans but ‘anytime anyone pays more than the actual debt’ and ‘applies not only to money, but to lending and borrowing items as well.’ (7)

In other words, if a jewish investor gave money to Levine or Madoff then Levine and Madoff in return for a promised rate of return – which is not a violation of ribit because it is not interest but rather profit (yes, a miniscule distinction but such quibbling is the very soul of Judaism) – then Levine and Madoff were required by ribit not to give their investors less back than they put in.

So, when Levine and Madoff defrauded the other jews out of their money they violated ribit not just a bit but completely.

And what is the penalty prescribed by Judaism for violating ribit?

Death. (8)

Now since jews cannot actually enact the death penalty in the United States since Halakhah cannot be seen to supersede US law – lest their power be exposed which jews pretty much universally agree would be a bad thing – jews seek to indirectly enforce such conditions – as they have done historically – (9) such as Madoff’s 150 year gaol sentence which was seen as an ‘academic’ death sentence, (10) while Levine’s crimes were less extensive although presumably just as destructive for those involved but jews never-the-less still appear to have pushed for a more extreme sentence to get as close to the death penalty as they possibly can.

Add to that the jewish community didn’t intervene to defend Levine from being disbarred by the Supreme Court of New Jersey in 2022 (11) and my guess is that – given most of his clients were observant jews – they have also decided to sit shiva for Levine as if he were dead, because had they had his way he would have been promptly executed for a horrendous violation of the prohibition of ribit by screwing a lot of jews out of their money, but that same logic and punishment wouldn’t apply if it had been gentiles he was screwing out of their money.

Hence why jewish conmen and fraudsters who target non-jews – such as those exposed by the French government about which I recently wrote – (12) are not viewed as criminals while jewish conmen and fraudsters who target jews are viewed as the very worst of criminals and deserving of figurative and/or literal death.

References

(1) Securities and Exchange Commission v. Seth P. Levine, Civil Action No. 21-civ-05719 (D.N.J. filed March 18, 2021) (https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-25054)

(2) https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/bergen-county-man-sentenced-97-months-prison-decade-long-60-million-fraud-scheme

(3) https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/madoff-jewish-affinity-fraud/460446/

(4) https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/nyregion/23yeshiva.html; https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/report-finds-losses-of-1-billion-at-yeshiva-university/

(5) https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/lehman-brothers-collapse.asp

(6) Deut. 23:20

(7) https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4108763/jewish/Moneylending-and-Jewish-Law.htm

(8) Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah: 161:2

(9) Paul Kriwaczek, 2006, ‘Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation’, 2nd Edition, Phoenix: London, p. 140; also see Myer Lew, 1944, ‘The Jews of Poland: Their Political, Economic, Social and Communal Life in the Sixteenth Century as reflected in the Works of Rabbi Moses Isserls’, 1st Edition, Edward Goldston: London, pp. 128-129

(10) https://www.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUSN1424896820090714/

(11) https://images.law.com/contrib/content/uploads/static/uploads/sites/18/2024/06/D-105-22-Levine-088500-MFD-Disbar.pdf

(12) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/frances-secret-investigation-into