The kosher cartel: Was this Cleveland butchery a front for money-laundering and illicit vape trade?

At Tibor’s Kosher Meats, they chop the liver just so. That’s what has kept c Shirley, an 84-year-old woman shopping there one recent day, coming back decade after decade.

The gleaming silver case always has what she wants, Shirley explained, and until recently, the man who often reached in and wrapped it up for her was the eponymous owner himself, Tibor Rosenberg.

The kosher cartel: Was this Cleveland butchery a front for money-laundering and illicit vape trade? Img-7357-1-1618600303

The kosher cartel: Was this Cleveland butchery a front for money-laundering and illicit vape trade? Img-7357-1-1618600303

“Is Tibor coming back?” asked Shirley, who spoke on the condition her last name not be used because the store has recently been the subject of scandal. She handed a fistful of bills to a clerk at the cash register, who grunted a curt “no.” Shirley packed her change into her purse and shook her head: “That’s too bad.”

When Rosenberg sold the store in 2019 to one of his employees, Ilan Senders, it was a major happening. Tibor’s is one of only two remaining kosher butchers in the tight-knit Jewish enclave of University Heights, and the Cleveland Jewish Newsran a photograph of Senders, who was 21 and had worked at Tibor’s for two years, and Rosenberg, then 65, clasping hands in a hearty shake.

But federal prosecutors contend this was not a simple passing of the knife from one generation to the next. Though Ilan Senders was the public face of the sale, his brother Eyton, then 31, was listed as “co-owner and butcher” on bank papers. But according to a civil-forfeiture case filed March 10 in federal court, Eyton had never carved a side of meat, and instead used the shop as a money-laundering front for his drug-trafficking business.

.https://forward.com/news/467897/the-kosher-cartel-was-this-cleveland-butcher-shop-a-front-for-money/

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The kosher cartel: Was this Cleveland butchery a front for money-laundering and illicit vape trade?

The kosher cartel: Was this Cleveland butchery a front for money-laundering and illicit vape trade?

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