‘Cult kidnap’ busts
4 in custody after sect ‘took kids’ from NY
Four more alleged members of Lev Tahor, an extremist Jewish sect based in Guatemala, have been charged with taking part in a plot to nab two children who are living with their mother upstate and take them back to their father at the group’s compound.
Revealed in court papers unsealed on Friday, defendants Mordechay Malka, Shmiel Weingarten, Yoil Weingarten and Yakov Weingarten were charged with participating in a scheme to take the two children from their mother, who had fled the Lev Tahor sect.
The children, Yante Teller, 14, and Chaim Teller, 12, are the grandchildren of Shlomo Helbrans, the late founder of Lev Tahor.
After being taken, the kids were located in December and returned to New York.
Malka was arrested this week at Newark International Airport and is still in custody, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. The other three remain at large.
All four men are charged with three counts of international parental kidnapping, which carries a maximum three-year sentence.
The arrests come after Lev Tahor members Nachman Helmans, Mayer Rosner, Jacob Rosner and Aron Rosner were arrested in December and were extradited to the US from Mexico.
According to court papers, Sara Helbrans, the children’s mother, fled the group after leaders tried to force Yante Teller to marry Jacob Rosner when the girl was just 13.
The feds say the defendants nabbed the kids by slipping Yante a cellphone to coordinate a 3 a.m. pickup outside their home in Woodridge, NY, where Shmiel Weingarten allegedly came to get them.
The defendants allegedly had the children dress in nonreligious clothing to disguise who they were and then flew them from Pennsylvania to Mexico.
The youngsters were later found near Mexico City, in the small town of Tenango del Aire.
Lev Tahor, which has about 230 members, has in the past been accused of child neglect and abuse. The group has moved over the years from Israel to Brooklyn to Quebec, and finally to Guatemala.