Prominent Monmouth County Real Estate Broker Sentenced for Fraudulently Concealing Assets from Bankruptcy Trustee

TRENTON, NJ—Barry Kantrowitz, 62, of Wayside, New Jersey, was sentenced today to five years of probation, including a year of home confinement, for fraudulently concealing $82,100 in cash from a trustee appointed by the United States Bankruptcy Court, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

Kantrowitz previously pleaded guilty to an information charging him with one count of fraudulent concealment of assets from a United States Bankruptcy Trustee. He entered his guilty plea before United States District Judge Joel A. Pisano, who also imposed sentence today in Trenton federal court.

According to the documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

Kantrowitz admitted that from February 2007 to March 2008, he held and concealed quantities of cash belonging to Solomon Dwek that were part of Dwek’s bankruptcy estate. Kantrowitz met Dwek on three separate occasions to give him cash, intending to conceal the monies from the trustee appointed to preside over Dwek's bankruptcy proceeding. On March 13, 2007, Kantrowitz hid a plastic bag containing $75,100 in cash behind air conditioning units of Kantrowitz’s business office in Oakhurst, New Jersey. During two other meetings—held on September 12, 2007, and March 21, 2008, at prearranged locations in Monmouth County, New Jersey—Kantrowitz delivered envelopes containing $5,000 and $2,000 in cash, respectively, to Dwek. Dwek, who was cooperating with the federal government at the time, secretly made consensual recordings of his meetings with Kantrowitz.

In addition to the home confinement and probation term, Judge Pisano ordered Kantrowitz to pay a $40,000 fine.

U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Michael B. Ward, with the investigation leading to today’s guilty plea.

The government was previously represented by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Gramiccioni, and is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian R. Howe, Deputy Chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Special Prosecutions Division in Newark.

Defense counsel: Joseph A. Hayden, Esq., Roseland, New Jersey