Germany – The owners of a Jewish butcher shop in Frankfurt, Germany were convicted of fraudulently selling their customers non-kosher meat, the Frankfurter Allgemeine reported on Saturday.
The two men, identified as Leslie W., 48, and Akiva H., 56, went on trial last year, accused of conducting this fraud over a period of two years.
During the trial Akiva H. admitted that he began selling the faux kosher meat in 2008 when “threatened with insolvency,” apologizing to “all those whose religious feelings were hurt,” Bild reported last year.
Leslie W. explained that he went along with the fraud after discovering it in 2010 due to fearing the damage that such a revelation could do to his business.
The fraud continued through 2012.
The butcher shop supplied kosher meat to a Jewish school, a nursing home and numerous private residences both within Frankfurt and other locales.
The pair involved in the fraud were know as “nice and gentle” men who were “well known in the Jewish community,” Joshua, a Jew from Frankfurt now living in Israel, told The Jerusalem Post at the time. “I knew both of them from synagogue and many of my Frankfurt friends including myself shopped there.”
Both were received sentences of probation and fines, Frankfurter Allgemeine reported, with Akiva H. receiving a two year suspended sentence and a nine thousand Euro fine while his co-conspirator received a slightly lesser sentence by a length of two months and was levied a fine of seven thousand two hundred Euros.
According to district court judge Jörn Immerschmitt, the pair got off with such a small sentence because of the intense social ostracism and stigma they now face after abusing the trust and religious sensibilities of their entire community.
They are also required to pay a symbolic fine of thirty thousand Euros to a local Jewish sports club.
