Erez now sits in a Brooklyn jail. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $1-million fine. His lawyer has declined to comment.
U.S. District Court Judge I. Leo Glaser, who has sentenced many of those involved in the case, has continually sounded pained and bewildered by the actions of the young people standing before him.
"I've had the misfortune of dealing with this case for the past two years," Glaser said at Roth's sentencing in September. "This has without any doubt--and I've been sitting in this courtroom for 20 years--been the most painful case I've had to deal with."
Defense lawyers and rabbis tell the judge about redemption and repentance, past good deeds and future good works of the young defendants.
The defendants themselves stand before him, hands clasped in front, clothed in yarmulkes and dark garb. They recount sheltered upbringings that required daily prayers and prohibited television and made them naive and eager for adventure.
"I'm still searching for answers, wondering how I did what I did," Roth said in court. "I grew up in a very protective environment, and the chance of going to Europe and all that money was like telling a child, 'Don't touch a hot stove.' I just did it without thinking.
"Sean Erez made everything seem so easy. I was living in a fantasy world."
In his sentencings, Glaser has lambasted the Hasidic community for its apparent inability to watch over its young people--for failing to notice that its own children, some of whom had scarcely ever left New York before, were running drugs around Europe.
"This case has left me sleepless for many, many nights," Glaser said at Roth's sentencing. "Not only for Simcha Roth, but for the many other young people garbed in the religious cloak designed to hide their criminal activity.
For the most part, except for court testimony, there has been a resounding silence from the Hasidic neighborhoods. Rabbi Avi Shafran, with Agudath Israel of America in Manhattan, a national group for Orthodox Jews, says the silence is "a feeling of shame."
"It hurts us very deeply," he said. "It's a topic that is being discussed in yeshivas. I don't think the failure should be racked up to education, but to an individual's failure to use their education to avoid temptation."
"In the end," he said, "human beings have free will--good on one side, and temptations and evil on the other side."
