Brooklyn men among those sentenced in inter-state divorce extortion case
TRENTON, N.J.— Three New York men who tried to coerce a Jewish man into giving his wife a religious divorce were sentenced on Thursday.
The men had pleaded guilty to crossing state lines to commit extortion. They were arrested in October 2013 with several others in an undercover sting in which an FBI agent contacted two Orthodox rabbis seeking a divorce document known as a get.
Jewish law mandates that the get be presented by a husband to a wife to make a divorce official. Prosecutors said the team used brutal methods and tools, including handcuffs and electric cattle prods, to torture unwilling husbands into granting gets.