Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, 60, of Borough Park is the first person to be convicted of organ trafficking in the United States after he admitted to brokering the sale of three human kidneys. Bloomberg broke the news that he pled guilty today in a federal court to three counts of organ trafficking and one count of conspiracy. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
Rosenbaum began negotiating kidney sales in 1999 and ran a scheme that arranged for Israelis to travel to the US to sell their kidneys, earning as much as $160,000 for a single kidney. He also helped fabricate relationships between donors and recipients in order to fool hospital staffers. (Every proposed transplant is scrutinized by a team of doctors and social workers meant to ensure the donor isn’t selling or coerced.)
In court, Rosenbaum claimed he was assisting people who had no other means of getting a kidney. “The son told me the father has kidney failure,” Rosenbaum said. “I helped him.”
Rosenbaum will be sentenced on Feb. 2. As an Israeli citizen, he could face deportation. His attorney has stated he will ask to avoid jail and that Rosenbaum’s already agreed to forfeit the money he made from those three sales, an amount totaling $420,000. The people who bought kidneys through him were neither charged nor identified.
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