Save a Torah

Menachem Youlus is a Baltimore rabbi and Torah scribe who sold Torah scrolls at inflated prices by falsely representing them as Holocaust-era Torahs he had rescued from Eastern Europe. On August 24, 2011, he was arrested on charges of mail fraud and wire fraud, and he pleaded guilty on February 2, 2012.

He was convicted of two counts of mail and wire fraud in a Manhattan federal court on October 11, 2012. On December 17, 2012, Youlus began serving a 51-month prison sentence at the federal correctional institution in Otisville, New York. Youlus was incarcerated until August 26, 2016. Youlus claimed he had personally traveled to Eastern Europe and beyond to recover Torah scrolls lost or hidden during the Holocaust, including some from the sites of concentration camps at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. dedicated to rescuing and restoring Torah scrolls hidden, lost or stolen during the Holocaust and other world upheavals and placing them in Jewish congregations. Between 2004 and 2010, Save a Torah received over $1.4 million in contributions from over 800 donors, and others.

In January 2010, the Washington Post reported that many Torahs purportedly rescued from Holocaust sites in Eastern Europe appeared to be old Torah scrolls mostly acquired when American congregations closed, and resold at high prices because of Youlus's unsubstantiated assertion that they were rescued from Holocaust-related sites.

On August 24, 2011, Youlus was arrested and charged with fraud. According to prosecutors, he made up the stories about the Torahs' origins. Youlus was also accused of taking more than $340,000 of the $1.2 million raised by Save a Torah, including $145,000 or more for his personal use. Through an attorney, Youlus initially denied the allegations. He later pleaded guilty to fraud, having used money from the fraud to cover his personal expenses.

Complaint

Youlus was arrested in Manhattan on fraud charges on August 24, 2011, for claiming to have toured Europe in search of lost or hidden Torah scrolls – the holy Jewish texts containing Hebrew scripture. He distributed the scrolls among American synagogues and communities, sometimes at inflated rates, and diverted almost one third of $1.2 million into his accounts for personal use.

Youlus embezzled more than a million dollars from Save a Torah. He had that money transferred to a Jewish bookstore he co-owned in Wheaton, on a pretext of payment for restoring old and damaged scrolls. He was charged for writing $344,000 in checks to himself from the bookstore account, $200,000 in personal expenses, and for using $90,000 to pay private school tuition fee for his kith and kin. He was also charged for $145,000, which donors had meant for saving a Torah and was instead diverted to his personal bank account.

Investigation

David M. Rubenstein, one of the founders of Carlyle Group, who had bought a Torah and donated it to Central Synagogue, sought the authenticity of scrolls by hiring Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust historian and former director of the Holocaust Research Institute at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Berenbaum said, "What I found is the claim for the origin of the Torah could not be verified."

Additionally, despite Youlus's claims that he traveled through Europe "rescuing" Torah strolls, his passport records show that he never traveled to Europe.

Confession and sentencing

Youlus offered this confession on February 2, 2012, to Manhattan Federal District Court judge Colleen McMahon: and was released from federal prison on August 26, 2016.

Awards

In 2005 Youlus received the Peacemaker award from the Olender Foundation.