Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that SHALOM LAMM and KENNETH NAKDIMEN were sentenced for conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process, in connection with an election in Bloomingburg, New York. LAMM was sentenced today to 10 months in prison. NAKDIMEN was previously sentenced on September 15, 2017, to six months in prison. Both defendants were sentenced by United States District Judge Vincent Briccetti in White Plains federal court.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim stated: “False and fraudulent voter registrations have no place in our democracy. As the sentences imposed on Shalom Lamm and Kenneth Nakdimen show, those who try to undermine the integrity of our elections will be prosecuted and punished.”
According to the allegations contained in the Indictment, as well as statements made in related court filings and proceedings:
Starting in 2006, LAMM and NAKDIMEN, real estate developers, sought to build and sell real estate in Bloomingburg, New York. From these real estate development projects, LAMM, NAKDIMEN, and others hoped for and anticipated making hundreds of millions of dollars. But by late 2013, the first of their real estate developments had met local opposition, and still remained under construction and uninhabitable. When met with resistance, rather than seek to advance their real estate development project through legitimate means, LAMM, NAKDIMEN, and others instead decided to corrupt the democratic electoral process in Bloomingburg by falsely registering voters and paying bribes for voters who would help elect public officials favorable to their project.
Specifically, in advance of an election in March 2014 for Mayor of Bloomingburg and other local officials, LAMM, NAKDIMEN, and others, and people working on their behalf, developed and worked on a plan to falsely register numerous people who were not entitled to register and vote in Bloomingburg because they actually lived elsewhere. Those people included some who never intended to live in Bloomingburg, some who had never kept a home in Bloomingburg, and indeed, some who had never set foot in Bloomingburg. LAMM, NAKDIMEN, and others took steps to cover up their scheme to register voters who did not actually live in Bloomingburg by, among other things, creating and back-dating false leases and placing items like toothbrushes and toothpaste in unoccupied apartments to make it seem as if the falsely registered voters lived there.
LAMM, NAKDIMEN, and others also bribed potential voters by offering payments, subsidies, and other items of value to get non-residents of Bloomingburg to register unlawfully and vote there.
In addition to the prison terms, LAMM, 58, of Bloomingburg, New York, was sentenced to one year of supervised release, a $20,000 fine, and 400 hours of community service and NAKDIMEN, 64, of Monsey, New York, was also ordered to pay a $20,000 fine and 400 hours of community service.
Mr. Kim praised the outstanding investigative work of the FBI-Hudson Valley White Collar Crime Task Force, the Sullivan County District Attorney’s Office, the Sullivan County Sherriff’s Office, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, the Internal Revenue Service, and the United States Postal Inspection Service. Mr. Kim also thanked the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, Election Crimes Branch, for its assistance in the case.
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