An Israeli described by US authorities as one of the world's biggest drug traffickers pleaded guilty on Tuesday to federal charges of conspiring to import thousands of ecstasy pills into the US.
The plea by Zeev Rosenstein, also known as "The Fat Man" and purportedly one of Israel's top organized crime figures, comes just a week before his trial was scheduled to begin.
Rosenstein, 52, was sentenced by US District Judge William Dimitrouleas to 12 years in prison, a sentence that was to be served in Israel as part of the deal.
Rosenstein was extradited from Israel in March last year to face a US grand jury indictment charging him with conspiring to distribute more than 850,000 pills of the synthetic drug MDMA, more commonly known as ecstasy.
The charges carried a maximum possible sentence of 40 years in prison and US$2 million in fines.
The plea deal calls for Rosenstein to pay a US$17,500 fine but includes no forfeiture of property, which is common in major federal drug cases.
He pleaded guilty to two drug trafficking conspiracy counts.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration included Rosenstein on its list of the 44 biggest global drug traffickers. Administration officials claimed his illicit network spanned four continents and used smugglers from Latin America to bring the drugs into the US.
Miami US Attorney Alexander Acosta said Rosenstein's organization shipped more than 1 million ecstasy pills in total to the US, with Rosenstein acting as a key financier and decision-maker.
Administration official Karen Tandy labeled him "the most infamous criminal in Israel."
"The conviction of Rosenstein is the final chapter in an unprecedented joint effort between the United States and Israel," Acosta said.
Rosenstein also reached a separate agreement with the Israeli government to plead guilty to an attempted 2001 murder conspiracy involving one of his rivals in that country, said Rosenstein attorney Roy Black.
That agreement calls for a three-year prison term to be served concurrently with the US prison sentence. The killing was never carried out.
There have been at least seven attempts by others to kill Rosenstein, including a December 2003 bomb attack in Tel Aviv that killed three people and injured 18 others but left him unscathed.
Dimitrouleas agreed to recommend that Rosenstein be given credit for the time he has served in jail since Nov. 8, 2004, when he was first arrested in Israel.
Ultimately Rosenstein will likely serve just over five additional years behind bars, Black said.
"I assume he will very promptly be taken to Israel," Black said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS