Christopher Peak Photo
Sarah Greer with her husband outside federal court.
Rabbi Daniel Greer’s wife took out hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from a joint bank account right after a former student allegedly molested by her husband was supposed to collect tens of millions in a civil suit.
Sarah Greer, who’s been married to the rabbi since 1971, now faces her own court case, as the victim’s lawyers allege that she participated in a fraudulent transfer and unjust enrichment by pocketing the money.
Attorneys for Eliyahu Mirlis, to whom a jury awarded $21.75 million in damages in a May 2017 verdict finding that Greer repeatedly sexually abused him from 2002 to 2005, filed a separate complaint against Sarah Greer in U.S. District Court on Wednesday.
“This is part of a concerted effort by D. Greer and the Yeshiva to transfer funds to [Sarah Greer], which benefit both [Greers], to shield them from collection of the judgement,” John Cesaroni, an attorney who’s trying to collect the judgement for Mirlis, wrote in the complaint. “The result was to hinder, delay or defraud Plaintiff by intentionally reducing D. Greer’s assets available to creditors and increasing the assets in the name of [Sarah Greer].”
The complaint asks for the court to award money damages, block the transfers, and reimburse attorneys’ fees and cost. (Click here to download the complaint.) Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer will hear the case in New Haven.
The Greers have been trying to hold off the seizure of bank accounts and foreclosure on properties, including their home, the yeshiva and its dorms, 53 rental apartments in the Edgewood neighborhood and two pieces of undeveloped land. Most of the properties are owned by nonprofits that Greer controls.
Cesaroni said that the judgement “remains almost completely unsatisfied,” and in fact, is bigger now than right after the verdict because of interest.
This summer, a state marshal seized one bank account for Mirlis, collecting $7,220. And a state judge entered a strict foreclosure on two vacant lots in Bethany, valued at roughly $200,000 each, effectively signing them over to Mirlis.
Last week, Greer was also ordered to enter a regular payment plan of $296 a week, taken from his $1,003 weekly salary from Edgewood Elm Housing Inc., plus $46 weekly rental income from a Rhode Island apartment.
But before those accounts got tied up in the litigation, Sarah Greer tried to pay herself out with $238,000, Mirlis’s lawyers argued in a new brief.
The latest complaint against Sarah Greer doesn’t provide many details. It’s heavily redacted, with all the paragraphs about her withdrawals blackened out. That’s because Judge Michael P. Shea, who oversaw the civil trial, agreed to designate all financial information in the case confidential, some of it too secret to even show to Mirlis.
But based on earlier testimony in open court, Mirlis’s lawyers appear to be referring to a check for over $220,000 that Sarah Greer wrote to herself. She took it out in cash “in the immediate wake of the verdict,” Judge Shea previously said.
Jeffrey Sklarz, a lawyer handling Greer’s finances, argued in court that those payments weren’t fraudulent, because they technically weren’t money transfers.
“There is Connecticut case law on this point that says a withdrawal from a bank account is not a transfer, because a transfer requires two parties,” he said.
When Judge Shea asked if that didn’t sound “suspicious,” Sklarz said that Sarah Greer was allowed to take her own money.
“Respectfully, your Honor, doing something entirely legal in the confines of the law is not suspicious,” Sklarz said.
Right after the judgement, the Greers also signed off on a payment from the yeshiva into Sarah’s 401(k) retirement account. Both of them are officers and directors of the yeshiva.
The brief also says that Sarah Greer received one additional payment.
Cesaroni argued in a supplemental motion that the redactions are “largely inappropriate” and “not confidential.” (Click here to download the motion.) But to not violate Judge Shea’s protective order, Cesaroni included them anyway while he tries to “modify this and other improper, blanket designations.”
Rabbi Greer, meanwhile, is currently facing criminal charges for the alleged sexual assault after police found that Mirlis accurately described details of Greer’s naked body. He is currently out on a $100,000 bond as the case proceeds, with the next court date on Jan. 15, 2019.
Beginning in the 1980s, Rabbi Greer oversaw the revival of the neighborhood around his yeshiva at the corner of Norton and Elm streets, renovating neglected historic homes. He and his family exposed johns who patronized street prostitutes in the neighborhood, and he advocated for keeping nuisance businesses out of the Whalley Avenue commercial corridor. In 2007, he launched an armed neighborhood “defense” patrol and then calling in the Guardian Angels for assistance to combat crime.
Over the years, Rabbi Greer played an active role in politics and government, including crusading against gay rights in Connecticut. In the 1970s, he led a successful campaign to force the United States to pressure the Soviet Union into allowing Jewish “refuseniks” to emigrate here and start new, freer lives. More recently, he filed suit against Yale University over a requirement that students live in coed dorms.
Previous coverage of this case:
• Suit: Rabbi Molested, Raped Students
• Greer’s Housing Corporations Added To Sex Abuse Lawsuit
• 2nd Ex-Student Accuses Rabbi Of Sex Assault
• 2nd Rabbi Accuser Details Alleged Abuse
• Rabbi Sexual Abuse Jury Picked
• On Stand, Greer Invokes 5th On Sex Abuse
• Rabbi Seeks To Bar Blogger from Court
• Trial Mines How Victims Process Trauma
• Wife, Secretary Come To Rabbi Greer’s Defense
• Jury Awards $20M In Rabbi Sex Case
• State Investigates Greer Yeshiva’s Licensing
• Rabbi Greer Seeks New Trial
• Affidavit: Scar Gave Rabbi Greer Away
• Rabbi Greer Pleads Not Guilty
• Decline At Greer’s Edgewood “Village”?
I don't see why the couples combined assets aren't immediately transferred to the aggrieved party.