New York, NY - Smooth-As-Silk Swindler Presenting Himself As A Religious Man

New York, NY - Joe Greenblatt persuades Selma and Jack Winston to invest $3.5 million over five years in a series of real estate deals run out of his Paramus office. Within months of Jack's death in 2002, "interest" checks to the grieving widow start to bounce.
With more than $800,000 in worthless checks, Selma finally blows the whistle, leading to Greenblatt's arrest. But it's too late. The big loss will force her to sell her beloved lakeside home in Bloomfield, Mich.
A year later, Greenblatt is facing serious jail time. He calls Selma, now 88. Could she "advance" him $138,500? She wires him the cash.
"He said it was a way to get my money back," Selma explains. Like many investors, she is closely following a series of criminal cases against Greenblatt. Her case in Hackensack has been put on hold pending his sentencing on federal fraud charges, which was postponed from this month to Oct. 5.

Joe Greenblatt an Orthodox Jew whose victims were mostly Jewish, including a Brooklyn synagogue.
And despite being nailed on 94 felony counts in a Brooklyn court nine years ago, Greenblatt was allowed to remain on the street so he could make restitution.
He fell $1.5 million short, but used the time to build a rap sheet that included two more arrests, at least five fraud lawsuits and hundreds of bounced checks.

Greenblatt presenting himself as a religious man at first gave many investors comfort, but later became a source of outrage.
"He's a religious Jew; how could he do it?" Esther Kitain asked. To Calhoun, however, "it was a joke to pass himself off as a pious man when he was a common thief. Investors believed him and believed in him. He adopted a lot of this religious veneer to lure them in."

Greenblatt's mother-in-law – who is trying to help her daughter and two grandsons manage while Greenblatt remains locked up, facing a decade or more in jail – sings his praises. "He's a good father, a good husband," Yolanda Horvath said. "He kept my daughter like a queen. That's the bottom line."
Maybe so, but that lifestyle – including a $1.6 million condo on the Upper East Side, private schools for the couple's two sons, a million-dollar home in the Hamptons – came with money stolen from Maywood Capital investors, says Susan Marcus, the company's former accountant. "He had everyone believing he was going to take their money and invest it in real estate, and return them a huge profit," Marcus said. "In fact, much of the money was diverted, and only a small portion went into real estate."

Greenblatt was scheduled to be sentenced July 21 on his federal fraud guilty plea, but the date was pushed back to Oct. 5 at the request of his newest attorney. As a result, he remains under federal control in a private correctional facility in Jamaica, N.Y.
Greenblatt's condo and house in the Hamptons, both purchased in the past five years, are expected to go on the selling block, along with a $500,000 condominium owned by his father on the ocean in Bal Harbour, Fla.