WHITE PLAINS – A consultant to developers who wanted to sway the 2014 Bloomingburg village elections so they could win approval to construct their housing development pled guilty in federal court in White Plains on Monday to conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process.
Volvy Smilowitz, also known as Zev Smilowitz, 29, of Monroe, faces up to five years in prison when sentenced in October.
Starting in 2006, Smilowitz and developers Shalom Lamm and Kenneth Nakdimen sought to build and sell real estate in Bloomingburg, from which they had hoped to make hundreds of millions of dollars. In late 2013, their first project met with local opposition while it remained under construction and uninhabitable.
Instead of working through the issues by legitimate means, the three men decided to corrupt the democratic electoral process in Bloomingburg by falsely registering voters and paying bribes for voters who would help elect public officials favorable to their project.
To register supposed voters who did not live in the village, the men created and back-dated false leases and placed items like toothbrushes and toothpaste in unoccupied apartments to make it seem as if the falsely registered voters lived there.
Smilowitz and Lamm also bribed potential voters by offering payments, subsidies, and other items of value to get non-residents of Bloomingburg to register unlawfully and vote there.
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