Throughout her visits with Elmann, Hanimov repeatedly insisted on listening in on a conversation between the businessman and the judge. “I am begging,” she said.
But the fast-talking fixer who boasted that he called the shots in Garson’s courtroom (although evidence shows the only one he had a direct link to was Siminovsky) wormed his way out of it.
“There is no reason for you to, I cannot let you hear such words,” he told Hanimov. “What do you want, that he [Garson] go to jail?”
By late November 2002, Hanimov had gathered enough evidence to give prosecutors probable cause to tap both Elmann and Siminovsky’s phone lines, and to plant a bug in the ceiling of Garson’s chambers.
Evidence tapes show that the two tangential targets were tight. They embraced when they bid each other goodbye one cold dark night outside the warehouse. Like close friends, they also reassured one another when things weren’t going well. When Elmann was uneasy about which way his client Levi’s case was going to go, Siminovsky, who was representing Levi, assured him of a win.
“I was getting Garson, I was getting Garson drunk for two hours. He’ll do what I want …” a cocky and confident Siminovsky said.
In January 2003, prosecutors decided to “tweak the wire”—to create an incident that would cause their suspects to engage in a flurry of phone calls. They sent their secret weapon, Hanimov, to bribe Siminovsky directly with $1,000.
“Siminovsky freaks out and goes crazy,” Assistant D.A. Noel Downey recalled.
Griping to Elmann the next day, Siminovsky said, “I thought she just flipped out and I thought she knew something …”
But Elmann reassured him, “No, she don’t know shit.”
Siminovsky, sounding a bit like his mentor Garson, boasted that he could have demanded sexual favors from Hanimov in exchange for helping her get her kids back. “You know what I could have told her? … I could have said to her, ‘You want your kids? Get on all fours and suck my dick,’” Siminovsky said. “You know what she would have done? She would have done it.”
Mother Nature was as cold as those words on the clear February morning when Siminovsky spied flashing lights in the rearview mirror of his Volvo—and pulled over not far from his house in Whitestone, Queens.
The probers worked quickly. They wanted to flip Siminovsky into cooperating with them against Garson before anyone noticed they had picked him up.
They took a scared Siminovsky to the austere Fort Hamilton army base in Bay Ridge for questioning. Once inside the prison-like complex, enclosed by barbed wire, they entered a cold room in a bare brick building and read Siminovsky his rights—but he didn’t want a lawyer. Confronted with the evidence against him, the father of two, wringing his hands and rubbing his head, asked to call his wife. Then, with the promise of a misdemeanor conviction and no time behind bars, the big-bellied barrister agreed to help investigators nail Garson.
“He flips in like fifteen or twenty minutes,” Downey said. “He folded like a house of cards.”
During the interrogation, Siminovsky’s cell phone kept ringing. It was none other than the judge himself.
“He wanted to go to lunch,” Assistant D.A. Michael Vecchione, head of the Brooklyn D.A.’s Rackets Division, said, laughing.
A week later, Siminovsky was in Garson’s chambers and gave the judge a box of cigars. “I feel like Groucho,” Garson said as he chomped on a stogie.
The turncoat lawyer put the carton in the top drawer of the judge’s desk. Siminovsky said he got the cigars from a client, but in actuality investigators bought the box, spending upwards of $200.
The action was captured in grainy black-and-white images by the eye of the camera above.
“Romeo y Julieta.
Warning: Cigars are not a safe alternative
to cigarettes
…” the judge read from the carton, commenting, “They are not a safe alternative to sex neither … but what are we going to do about it?’’
He then took the box from his top drawer and put it in the lower one as if to hide it in a safer place. Minutes later, the plotting protégé Siminovsky thanked Garson for all his help, and asked for more guidance regarding the Levi divorce.
“Because you have my head together. You know, you gave me little pointers. Now you just have to tell me what to write in the memo and then we’ll be okay,” Siminovsky said.
The judge helped Siminovsky draft the memo, seeming disinterested as he gave dictation.
“The only evidence in the case is … whatever the hell it was by stipulation or blah, blah …” he said. Then he gave a bit of unsolicited advice to Siminovsky. He wanted his boy to cash in on the extra work they were doing. “I am telling you, charge for it … This is extra … this was not contemplated … The judge made me do it … Fucking squeeze the guy …” Garson said.
Less than a week later, Siminovsky slipped an envelope containing ten marked $100 bills to the judge, as thanks for referring a client to him. The judge stuffed the envelope into his pants pocket, even though he was prohibited from taking referral fees. It was only after Siminovsky left that the judge, alone in chambers, opened the envelope and counted the cash. He panicked, and summoned Siminovsky back.
“Yeah, ah, Paul, this is, ah, Garson, do me a favor, ah, why don … ah, if you can get back here I’d appreciate it,” he told the lawyer by phone.
When Siminovsky returned, the judge said, “This is a lot of money for whatever you call it …”
He gave back the bills, but Siminovsky told him, “Don’t worry about it,” and threw the envelope on the judge’s desk.
Garson picked it up and half-heartedly tried to hand it to Siminovsky again—there was at least three feet between the far edge of the envelope and the tips of the lawyer’s fingers—and then put it in his desk drawer.
After a little more back and forth between the two, Garson finally said, “I appreciate it.”
Earlier that same day the judge had made a remark to Siminovsky about his work that would prove prophetic: “One of the greatest things about this job is I don’t know what the fuck I have tomorrow until I get here. I don’t give a shit either, you know.”
Two days later, the judge got the shock of his life, before he got to work. Investigators picked him up outside his Upper East Side apartment and took him to the same army barracks in the shadow of the Verrazano Bridge where they’d brought Siminovsky.
Garson was carrying the marked $100 bills—and insisted on a lawyer (not Siminovsky).
Once the attorney arrived, the judge refused to cooperate. That was when investigators asked if they could speak to him alone.
They fed Garson a little detail: The candy dish Siminovsky regularly reached into on the judge’s desk had broken recently—and had to be replaced.
That seemingly harmless anecdote got the judge’s attention. How could anyone know it unless the place was bugged? Then a peek at the cigar video had the judge singing a tune far different than his raunchy renditions in chambers.
A fidgety Garson—who took long pauses between sentences as if to catch his breath—offered to help prosecutors nail Brooklyn Democratic Party bigwig Clarence Norman. And as if getting pledged into Siminovsky’s new fraternity, Garson agreed to wear a wire. He maintained he could prove that on sale in Kings County was far more than the justice that prosecutors suspected, but whole judgeships.
Despite the try, Garson turned up nothing. However, prosecutors have credited the judge with providing information that led to Norman’s subsequent indictment on unrelated corruption charges.
On April 23, 2003, Garson traded his robes for handcuffs. He turned himself in—a stogie in his mouth, curl of smoke swirling upward—under the lights of TV and newspaper cameras, so his fingerprints and mug shot could be taken.
“When I asked him, ‘Why did you do this with Siminovsky? Why did you take care of him? Why did you accept that?’ he said, ‘I like him and he kind of reminded me of myself,’” Vecchione said.
Siminovsky has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of giving unlawful gratuities for wining and dining the judge in exchange for receiving lucrative guardianship jobs. Prosecutors have asked that he be spared jail time, but he could be sentenced to up to one year behind bars.
Having resigned from the bar and having promised never to practice law again in New York State, Siminovsky is doing manual labor in a warehouse to help support his wife and two kids. He’s a key witness in Garson’s upcoming trial.
Also busted were Elmann, Levi, and others, including a court clerk and court officer accused of steering cases to Garson’s courtroom for cash and cameras—bypassing the computerized random-selection process aimed at stemming corruption.
Among the others were a rabbi and his daughter, who greased Elmann’s palms in an attempt to get Garson to rule in their favor.
While most wore frowns as they looked forward and then to the side for the mug shots, Garson sported a smirk across his lips and a steely glint in his eyes.
Suspended without pay from his $136,700-a-year job and later retired, Garson maintains his innocence. He is awaiting trial on charges of receiving bribes in the form of drinks and dinners from Siminovsky. He is not charged with fixing cases for cash.
Garson claimed he was on his way to report Siminovsky to authorities when he was intercepted by investigators.
“I regret very much not turning in Mr. Siminovsky immediately,” he told CBS News as the media storm continued.
His lawyer, Ron Fischetti, has maintained the judge was set up. He has convinced a judge to throw out many of the charges. While Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes is appealing, left are one felony and two misdemeanors.
“It’s an extremely weak case and I think he’ll be acquitted,” Fischetti said.
Elmann—the mysterious electronics salesman—has pleaded guilty to thirteen counts, including seven felonies of bribery, bribe-receiving, and conspiracy. He’s throwing himself on the mercy of the court at sentencing and could get anywhere from probation to twenty-eight years. There is no evidence he knew Garson personally.
“You see, I bullshit these people left and right just for [them] to come up with money,” he once told Siminovsky. “… I don’t give a shit about them.”
Levi, fifty-one, has pleaded guilty to giving Elmann $10,000 to fix his case. There is no direct evidence that Garson ever received a dime.
Rabbi Ezra Zifrani, sixty-seven, and his daughter, Esther Weitzner, thirty-seven, each pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor conspiracy charge in exchange for 210 hours of community service and three years of probation. They made it clear in court the only person they knew was Elmann.
Court Officer Louis Salerno—caught on videotape taking from Siminovsky a bag prosecutors say contained a VCR and DVD player outside the courthouse for steering cases to Garson—was convicted at trial of two felonies: taking a bribe and receiving a reward for official misconduct. Salerno, fiftytwo, faces up to seven years behind bars.
Retired Court Clerk Paul Sarnell, fifty-eight, has been acquitted of bribe-receiving.
Hanimov’s husband was never charged with any wrongdoing. There was no evidence to support Elmann’s claim that he had tried to buy the custody of his children.
Hanimov has landed herself a $200,000 movie contract with Warner Brothers for the rights to her story, heads a support group for women, and is looking forward to the final reallife scene of the saga, testifying against Garson.
“One of the happiest days in my life was when Judge Garson got arrested,” she said. “He destroyed many, many, many lives.”
Her best reward of all, of course, has been gaining custody of all three children. She is enjoying them now, along with the baby she gave birth to before Garson’s bust.
“If a mother loses her kids, she lost one of the parts of her body. When you take her kids away from her, her life is over,” she said. “Thank God, I have my kids back.”
P
OSTSCRIPT
:
Since this piece was written, more of the Gerald
Garson saga has played itself out.
Nissim Elmann was sentenced to 1 1/4 to 5 1/2 years in
prison.
Court Officer Louis Salerno was sentenced to 1 to 4 1/2 years.
Judge Jeffrey Berry, disregarding prosecutors’ recommendations
for leniency, sentenced Paul Siminovsky to one year in
jail.
Garson was convicted of bribe-receiving and receiving rewards
for official misconduct after trial. He wept when he was sentenced
to 3 to 10 years in prison.
In sentencing Elmann and Salerno, Berry declared, “Justice is
not for sale.”
Let reverence for the law become the political religion of the
nation.—Abraham Lincoln (as seen on the entrance to Thomas Jefferson High School, East New York, Brooklyn)
N
o one much cares what happens in East New York. Most folks outside of Brooklyn likely don’t know where the neighborhood is, much less how to get there. And for the most part you can’t blame them. In a city of eight million, where homeless people are scattered across city streets and at least a handful of violent crimes are regular occurrences in said streets, caring is a luxury you can’t afford. This was especially true in 1991.
East New York in ’91 was a neighborhood where abandoned cars littered the curbs because no one cared enough to tow them away. Children would be kept up at night by the sounds of semi-automatic weapons fired off in abandoned lots, which continued because they were rarely hushed by the subsequent wail of police sirens. It was a neighborhood where a small, narrow, darkly lit bar could house fully naked prostitutes dancing salsa in a corner and pass itself off as a “strip bar” rather than a whorehouse.
In one residential block, a marijuana dealer peddled his wares through a small hole, just large enough for a hand, cut into a small square steel plate installed on the wall of the house. The buyer would knock and state his order, then money and pot would change hands through that hole—with neither buyer nor seller ever seeing one another’s faces. It was well understood that in a place where the police don’t respond to the sound of machine guns, the DEA wouldn’t be busting marijuana dealers over nickel bags.