3 Rockland Men Accused Of $6M Money-Laundering Scheme

Three Rockland County residents face federal charges in connection with a multimillion-dollar money-laundering scheme. Prosecutors in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York say the three cooked up an illegal money-transfer operation to transmit money made in criminal activities.

"Making money illegally is criminal in and of itself, but operating an unlicensed money remitting business, especially from outside of the United States, will almost certainly result in federal criminal charges," FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said. "Whenever someone needs to hide and move money, there’s a pretty good chance something’s afoot."

Chaskel Landau, Alter Landau and Joseph Neuman were arrested following an FBI sting operation.

Prosecutors alleged that from September 2014 to August 2016, the Landaus and Neuman engaged in a series of conversations and meetings with a confidential witness. In order to induce the witness to invest about $6 million in property owned by Chaskel Landau and his family, the trio agreed to receive and transmit what they believed to be millions of dollars of funds that the witness had illegally obtained from his business. The defendants agreed to conceal the source of the witness’s money by transmitting the witness’s money to third parties, with the expectation that it would be returned to the witness, in return for a 10 percent "fee."

The scheme was two-pronged. First, the three agreed to take cash from the witness, exchange the cash for checks written from real estate companies controlled by Joseph Neuman, and make the checks payable to a third party bank account purportedly controlled by the witness.

Second, the three agreed to use charitable organizations under their control to transmit the witness's overseas money into the United States. Over the course of the conspiracy, the defendants transmitted about $500,000 of what they believed to be stolen property, and agreed to transmit about $6 million total.

Chaskel Landau, 45, and Alter Landau, 64, are Spring Valley residents. Neumann, 78, lives in Monsey. They were each charged with one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, each of which carries a maximum term of five years in prison.

The U.S. Attorney's Office did not identify the charitable organizations.

Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, praised the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office for their assistance in the case.