BLOOMINGBURG – If all goes according to at least one version of officialdom, newly elected village trustee Aaron Rabiner will be sworn in at the Bloomingburg reorganization meeting this Thursday, April 16. After all, his election was ratified last month and the reorg meeting was already postponed once, from last Thursday.

Then again, with the rest of the village board and town of Mamakating having filed a new federal lawsuit this week charging developer Shalom Lamm and his associates, including an unspecified number of "John Does" that could be considered inclusive of Rabiner, anything could happen.

The complaint filed in federal court on April 14 alleges that Lamm et al have engaged in "racketeering activity consisting of repeated instances of deception, corruption, bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud and voter fraud, in order to construct a disputed high-density housing development and take control of local government for personal benefit," according to the town and village's new PR firm, West Side Strategy. Put before the same U. S. Southern District Court in White Plains that is overseeing an anti-Semitism case brought against the Pine Bush School District, and hearing another civil rights case brought against Bloomingburg and Mamakating by Lamm, the lawsuit was written and is being represented by New York attorneys Phillip Simpson and David Holland, the former with a long history with complex real estate development cases, the latter with a concentration on racketeering cases, as well as his work as counsel for High Times magazine and director of New York NORML.

The complaint details allegations of "a pattern of racketeering committed over nearly a decade through lies and deceit, in order to construct a disputed high-density housing development," and purports to put forth a timeline which shows that Lamm secretly purchased large parcels of land, using local resident Duane Roe as his front man; had Roe then make fraudulent representations about building a 125-unit luxury weekender golf course community to convince local officials to have the village annex nearby town land, and then "acquire permitting and zoning approvals" while also seeking "to take control of local government to pass additional regulations that benefitted the racketeering enterprise" via bribes and threats.

Among those threats, the 158-page lawsuit alleges, is Lamm's own federal lawsuit against village and town officials, put before the courts last September, and his attempts to brand his opponents as anti-Semitic. Furthermore, the paperwork describes Lamm's purchase of and renovation of homes throughout the rest of Bloomingburg, in addition to what he's been able to build of his previously-approved 396 townhome Chestnut Ridge development, as part of a larger conspiracy to commit voter fraud on his own behalf.

The new lawsuit, which draws on federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, does not ask for any specific amount of money but rather for the court to give the town and not the village legal jurisdiction over the development's land, that the development be halted, and that a federal monitor be appointed to oversee future development in the community. It also named former Roe and former village mayor Mark Berentsen amongst those being served.

Lamm's federal lawsuit, for a total of $25 million, alleges a conspiracy of anti-Semitism in the village and town's land use and other actions of recent years. In a recent decision by the same court the new charges were filed in this week, a judge quashed some of the subpoena parts of Lamm's suit that focused on individuals in the Rural Community Coalition and other private groups apart from the municipalities — for allegedly pursuing a "mission" to block Hasidic Jews from moving to the village of Bloomingburg and the town of Mamakating — as being "too broad and invasive to be enforced" as the New York Law Journal summarized her findings. Nevertheless, the case was allowed to proceed in asking for "documents and communications from the allegedly hostile group" that discuss the development, any of the plaintiffs, or Hasidic Jews generally.

Lamm's suit, filed by the Bloomingburg Jewish Education Center, basically charges that the RCC and other policies were only formed after the village learned Hasidic Jews were interested in Chestnut Ridge, which now has 51 out of a planned 396 townhouses constructed.

Stephen Engel of Dechert LLP, lead lawyer for the suit, has pointed to approvals and disapprovals for everything from a girls' school to a mikvah bath for religious uses as evidence of the complaint.

Phillips and Holland, meanwhile, fill their complaint with a detailed timeline of meetings, correspondences and other matters that leave out mention of Lamm's other local development projects to emphasize bribes, voter fraud and other evidence of their racketeering premise.

The state, in its local supreme court and appellate divisions, keeps moving through ongoing electoral charges, matters of missed details regarding past actions and statutes of limitations, and the increasing amount of legal paperwork surrounding the village and its stalled development and rebuilding projects.

And yes, there is still an FBI investigation ongoing resulting from a series of raids from March of 2014.

Two key points must be kept in mind. First, the village of Bloomingburg, a very small place, was facing a crisis over its sewage treatment plant when all this started in 2006. The old one, a primitive system, was routinely polluting the Shawangunk Kill with overflow. The DEC had warned the village that this could not go on and behind that warning lay the threat of massive fines. The developer, Lamm, proposed building a $5 million waste water treatment plant which would solve the village's problem and allow him to build Chestnut Ridge. It is now completed and awaiting formal acceptance by the village.

The second point is the identity of the intended purchasers of the Chestnut Ridge townhomes. Anyone can buy them, it is said, but it is widely believed that they will only be sold to Satmar Hasidim... even though none have actually sold as yet.

Michael Fragin, a spokesman for Lamm, released a statement Tuesday calling the new lawsuit "a public relations stunt filled with recycled allegations previously rejected by New York courts" and expressing confidence of a quick dismissal.