BLOOMINGBURG – During the run-up to a bitterly contested village election during the spring of 2014, the FBI conducted an early morning raid in Bloomingburg. Agents remained in the village all day and visited a number of properties taking photographs, conducting interviews and removing items. They also took laptop computers from the offices of Shalom Lamm and Kenneth Nakdiman, developers behind the controversial Chestnut Ridge town house development on Winterton Road.

Since then, there have been other elections and the character of the village has begun to change, first with an anti-development board of trustees that shifted planning matters to the surrounding Town of Mamakating, and then to one with tight legal representation from a top Long Island law firm, which brought those same zoning issues back under the village's aegis.

Throughout, opponents of the development wondered what was happening with the FBI investigation. And then last week, Lamm, Nakdiman and Zev "Volvy" Smilowitz were arrested and charged with conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process, with the charges coming from Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and William Sweeney of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"In pursuit of millions of dollars in profits from a real estate development project, the defendants allegedly hatched a cynical ploy to corrupt the electoral process in Bloomingburg," Bharara stated. "As alleged, to get public officials supportive of their development project elected to local government, the defendants concocted a scheme to falsely register voters who did not live in Bloomingburg, including some who had never even set foot there. And to cover up their voter fraud scheme, the defendants allegedly back-dated fake leases and even placed toothpaste and toothbrushes in empty apartments to make them appear occupied by the falsely registered voters. Profit-driven corruption of democracy cannot be allowed to stand no matter who does it or where it happens."

In addition to Lamm, Nakdimen and Smilowitz, former Mamakating supervisor Harold Baird had been arrested earlier for participating in the conspiracy. Baird pled guilty to submitting false voter registrations for Bloomingburg, though he did not live there.

Eleven years ago, in 2005, Lamm began purchasing property in and around Bloomingburg and started talking up a development that was initially described as a luxury retirement project, with homes built around a golf course. To go with it was an offer to build a new waste water treatment facility, something the village needed.

In the subsequent planning process the development shifted shape and emerged in 2009 with final approvals as Chestnut Ridge, a high density of subdivision of 396 town houses. Three years later, as final planning approvals were under review, some in the community noticed room for what appeared to be two kitchen areas in all homes and started to protest what they saw as a possible Hasidic development similar to Kiryas Joel.

The new indictment explains what happened next.

"... by late 2013, the first of their real estate developments had met local opposition, and still remained under construction and uninhabitable," it reads. "When met with resistance, rather than seek to advance their real estate development project through legitimate means, the defendants instead 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."

Two elections were fought in 2014. The first, for the village board, was won by the opponents of Chestnut Ridge. The second, which sought dissolution of the village into the Town of Mamakating, was narrowly defeated by the votes of newcomers to the village. Lawsuits began to fly soon afterwards.

In April 2015, the Town of Mamakating hired a Washington, D.C. public relations firm and soon after joined with the village to file a racketeering case against Lamm, charging voter fraud, bribery and racketeering. That lawsuit was eventually dismissed in New York State court. Firing back, Lamm filed a $25 million civil rights case in federal court, alleging religious discrimination and winning a settlement with the municipalities' insurance companies earlier this year, with the town and village forced to pay a total of $2.9 million.

Gerald Benjamin, of the Benjamin Center at SUNY New Paltz, has been studying the movement of the Hasidic population from Brooklyn to the Mid-Hudson valley. He notes the vulnerability of very small villages, of which there are more than seventy in the state with less than five hundred residents.

"Such small populations make these villages vulnerable politically through elections," he observed. "This is not the only example of alleged voter fraud."

Benjamin also noted that the number of lawsuits filed around incoming communities of ultra-orthodox Jews "has gone wild."

"When you are relying on litigation to make decisions, it is not healthy," the former county legislator added.

For their part, the opponents of Chestnut Ridge are enjoying a moment of jubilation while acknowledging that a long hard fight still lies ahead.

"We're pleased that some of the individuals that were involved in some of the corrupt, criminal behavior in Bloomingburg have been indicted for some of their wrongdoing, and we're looking forward to more indictments," said Holly Roche of the Rural Community Coalition. "This is the beginning of the vindication that those who fought this, fought it for no other reason than the criminal activity, want. It had nothing to do with anti-Semitism."

Meanwhile, legal experts say that overturning judgments and elections will require petitioners to go back to the courts, to seek new elections among other remedies. The cost and timing of such endeavors is only now starting to be calculated.