Ophira Dorin traveled from Israel to Costa Rica for a kidney transplant that cost her $175,000. The donor was paid $18,500
A broker who trades in human organs might seem a difficult thing to find. But Ms. Dorin’s mother began making inquiries around the hospital where she worked, and in short order the family came up with three names: Avigad Sandler, a former insurance agent long suspected of trafficking; Boris Volfman, a young Ukrainian émigré and Sandler protégé; and Yaacov Dayan, a wily businessman with interests in real estate and marketing.
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The Brokers
Three of the central operators in Israel’s underground kidney market, which has flourished in a country where deceased organ donation rates are low:
"Wily businessman" Yaacov Dayan
The men were, The New York Times learned during an investigation of the global organ trade, among the central operators in Israel’s irrepressible underground kidney market. For years, they have pocketed enormous sums for arranging overseas transplants for patients who are paired with foreign donors, court filings and government documents show.
Avigad Sandler, a former insurance agent and Israeli Army officer who was arrested in 2012 on suspicion of organ trafficking
Boris Volfman, a protégé of Mr. Sandler’s who now runs his own transplant tourism agency, Lesham Shamaim, or “In the Name of Heaven”
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In 2012, an 83-year-old Texas car dealer, John W. Wiesner, paid $330,000 to Mr. Sandler to arrange a transplant in Sri Lanka, Israeli court documents show.
In an email that April, Mr. Sandler told Mr. Wiesner he was being charged extra “due to the high risk” posed by his age, which would have disqualified him at most American hospitals. Mr. Wiesner did not have his own donor.
“If the details are acceptable, please wire $40,000 USD to the following bank account,” Mr. Sandler instructed.
Mr. Wiesner’s trip to Sri Lanka was pre-empted by Mr. Sandler’s arrest the next month. The Israel Police found $150,000 of Mr. Wiesner’s money and returned it, according to court filings. He then sued Mr. Sandler and others to recover the rest. The case was settled in March for $66,000, court records show. Mr. Wiesner and his lawyers declined to comment.
Mr. Sandler, 65, a former Israeli Army officer, had come under suspicion back in 2008 when European Union prosecutors investigated a trafficking network in Kosovo. Numerous attempts to contact him through lawyers and relatives were unsuccessful.
Building a Business
Damian Goldstein is a pseudonym used by a 30-year-old Israeli named Adi Vladlen Lishinski, The Times has determined from documents and interviews.
While in San José, Mr. Lishinski sublet a two-bedroom flat on the 17th floor of the country’s tallest building, where he made daily use of the gym and blared rock ‘n’ roll, according to building staff members. In a photograph posted on his Facebook page, he is seen surveying San José from the balcony, bare-chested and tattooed, sunglasses in place despite foreboding gray skies.
Adi Vladlen Lishinski, an Israeli organ broker, who went by the pseudonym Damian Goldstein, on the balcony of the apartment he sublet while in San José
Mr. Lishinski had immigrated to Israel from Ukraine as a child. He began building a modest criminal record as a teenager, and by October 2011, he had jumped bail in a robbery case. He spent time in Sri Lanka and then, according to immigration records, arrived in San José on Oct. 10, 2012.
Shortly after, Mr. Lishinski stopped at a car dealership. The $20,000 he had to spend was not enough to buy the Grand Cherokee that caught his eye. But during several visits, he struck up enough of a relationship with the salesman, Carlos Zúñiga Forero, to reveal what had brought him to San José.
“He said he was making a living selling organs,” Mr. Zúñiga said. “He said it was legal because the people sign some papers.”
The "Pound of Flesh" Crime Ring is Apprehended
“It is clear to us that these people sold their bodies for pennies,” Mr. Arenfeld said of the donors. He said that prior arrests had not seemed to deter the brokers, adding, “We see a pattern of behavior that is repeating itself.” - more HERE.
