A Brooklyn man became the first person in the U.S. convicted of organ-trafficking when he pleaded guilty Thursday to selling black-market kidneys at a huge markup.
Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, 60, faces up to 20 years in prison but plans to ask a judge to let him simply forfeit his paydays and go free. Rosenbaum, of Borough Park, admitted to brokering just three transplants, though he boasted on secret tapes that he actually handled "quite a lot" during the decade-long scheme.
Prosecutors say he paid vulnerable Israelis as little as $10,000 to give up a kidney, then charged desperate Americans $120,000 or more for the organs.
In Trenton federal court, he described one case like this: "The son told me the father has kidney failure ... I helped him."
He admitted he created cover stories for each case, inventing fictitious relationships between donors and recipients. His lawyers claimed the money he got went to pay expenses and that the recipients would have died if they didn't get the illegal kidneys.
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