The NJ Star Ledger reports: 

“If anyone ever asks you, you didn’t see me,” says the cooperating witness (“CW”), already facing federal fraud charges and now wearing a wire as an undercover informant for the government. “You understand? No bankruptcy, no bank schnookie, no nothing. Don’t say nothin’ to nobody.”

The long-running criminal sting being run with the help of CW broke open this week with the arrest of 44 people – including five rabbis, two state legislators and three mayors – charged in a far-ranging money laundering and political corruption scheme.

But lawyers for many of the accused claim CW set up others to get himself out of a jam – a claim of entrapment that others say rarely holds up in court.

“He is just another guy trying to buy his way out of trouble, said attorney Daniel Welsh, who is representing Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith (D-Hudson). “When people face jail time, they do a lot of unscrupulous things.”

Smith, who was arraigned in federal court Friday on corruption charges just tipped his head back and rolled his eyes when asked about the man at the center of the case, but would not say anything as he walked from then courthouse in Newark.

Terry Ridley, attorney for Lori Serrano, former chairwoman of the Jersey City Housing Authority, who is charged with accepting $10,000 in cash, said CW may have been working to please the government.

“He obviously worked with the government to set people up,” said Ridley. “Certainly my feeling is that my client was caught up in this web of deception.

Michael Bachner, the lawyer for a Rabbi, charged with laundering $585,000, made the same argument.

“CW generally used his relationship and his father’s relationships to manipulate, in our opinion, innocent victims,” he declared.

Legal experts and federal authorities, though, said entrapment is not a defense that will likely sway any jury.

John Farmer Jr., dean of Rutgers Law School and a former state attorney general, said entrapment is rarely used and rarely succeeds. While the complex case was built around the use of CW to operate the sting, he said not to assume that to be a weakness.

“He’s helping the government because he’s in trouble and he’s not going to be believable. But the government understands those people have baggage,” explained Farmer. “The key is you have to have corroboration.”

Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra Jr., said everyone is entitled to raise any defense they see fit.

“However, we have heard the entrapment allegation time and time again and not surprisingly, it never holds up to the law,” he said. “Every time it has been raised in similar circumstances, those individuals have ultimately pleaded guilty or have been convicted – in every single instance.”

The investigation began with a probe into alleged money laundering by some orthodox Jewish leaders in the Syrian Sephardic communities of Deal and Brooklyn.

According to criminal complaints, the rabbis and others helped CW – a disgraced developer and son of a prominent rabbi who was arrested in 2006 on federal bank fraud charges that have never come to trial – hide $3 million in assets. They believed the money came from an ongoing bankruptcy case by taking checks drawn to charities and yeshivas they controlled, converting it to cash through contacts in Israel, and keeping 10 to 15 percent for the transaction.

The political corruption charges – which resulted in the arrests of two state legislators and three mayors, along with dozens of others – grew separately out of an expansion of CW’s role as an undercover informant. Here, he assumed another name and looked to grease the way for quick approvals of development projects in Hudson County in return for big political contributions and cash payoffs.

And in the most bizarre aspect of the case, CW contracted to buy a kidney for $160,000 from a Brooklyn man long suspected of dealing in lucrative black-market transplants.

While CW motivations will be repeatedly questioned by defense attorneys who will point to the federal fraud charges hanging over his head, the damage will come from a defendant’s own words captured on video and audio tapes, said Scott Resnick, a former federal prosecutor now practicing at KattenMuchinRosenman LLP in New York.

“The reality is his voice is not there and he’s not the one accepting the money,” he noted.

Resnick said as the dust begins to settle, it is likely that some of those charged will cooperate, others will plead out their cases to reduce the charges against them, and others may very well be charged in new allegations that might bring new aspects to one of the most unusual cases ever seen in criminal court.

A lot will turn upon the words spoken on tape and what the tapes depict, Alan Zegas, a noted defense attorney.

“The government may introduce tapes it contends support a charge that an illegal transfer of money is taking place, but often what is taking place is ambiguous,” he remarked. “For example, a person undercover may try to lead people to say certain things and that person may say ‘uh-huh,’ which is a standard acknowledgment that we are listening, but may not be agreement.”

Still, he doubts many will opt for trial, given the surveillance tapes, and the penalties that have been meted out in recent corruption cases.

“There will be a lot of people cooperating,” predicted Zegas.