An ultra-Orthodox rabbi from Israel is being held in New York without bail for allegedly hiding his monstrous sex crime record in order to get a US visa and come to New York.
Yakov Yitzchak Roth — a “rebbe” in the Hasidic group Shomrei Emunim — was arrested Tuesday in Borough Park by cops with the NYPD Special Victim’s Squad.
He had flown here from Tel Aviv in late August after swearing in a visa application that he had never been arrested or convicted, according to the federal complaint against him.
In reality, just six months earlier he had finished serving a 16-year sentence on his 1997 conviction in the District Court of Tel Aviv for raping, sodomizing and sexually assaulting a child relative, the complaint said.
Roth’s attorney, Shulamis Peltz, declined to comment on the case, except to say, “The current allegations are just allegations and have not been proven.”
Roth, whose father, Rabbi Avraham Chaim Roth, led a small congregation of 200 followers in Jerusalem before his death in August, 2012, is due back in Brooklyn Federal Court for a bail hearing on Monday.