Newly released from prison, Mordechai Samet relives the pain, guilt, and gratitude: “Don’t play games. Don’t get to where I did”

Photos: Shlomy Deutsch

"I made a huge mistake,” Reb Mordechai Yitzchak Samet says without fanfare. “And I paid a horrible price.”

He is at home in Kiryas Joel, the chassidic enclave abutting Monroe, New York, following his early release from prison under the prison reform First Step Act that allows for home confinement from age 60. Yet thankful as he is for the shortened term, the toll of the last 18 years is evident on his careworn face. His beard is white, but the light has finally returned to his eyes after sitting behind bars for close to two decades, onceafter a federal court sentenced him to one of the harshest sentences for white-collar crimes — 27 years in prison.

Mordechai Samet, arrested in an FBI roundup in 2001 and charged with running several fraud schemes, is ever grateful to the askanim who were able to secure his early release and have the immigration detainer on him lifted: Samet, an Israeli, is not an American citizen and faced deportation following his prison term, but the lobbying efforts paid off, as the father of 11 was able to return to his family upon his release.

He is full of praise and gratitude to HaKadosh Baruch Hu for finally reuniting him with his family, and he’s already taken advantage of his new lease on life to disseminate messages of emunah on one hand, and to warn the public against getting entangled with the law on the other.

“Don’t be tempted to get involved in anything that is illegal,” he tells Mishpacha in his first media interview since coming home. “It makes no difference how attractive it appears — it’s simply not worth it. You won’t get wealthy from it. Don’t be smart with the law. Don’t try to be an oiber-chacham. Don’t persuade yourself that the law is for others but not for you. It will only cause you endless suffering, not to mention the tremendous chillul Hashem. I hope that this message will resonate and will prevent others from experiencing the horrific years that I went through.”

Mordechai Yitzchak Samet is recovering slowly; he davens in a small shul near his home. In personal conversations, people try to get him to share some of the more harrowing stories from behind bars. In response, he emphasizes the middah of bitachon and hakaras hatov to Hashem. These two fundamentals gave him the strength to keep going during one of the longest incarcerations a chassidic Jew has ever experienced in an American prison for financial fraud.

But his is also a story of teshuvah, of rectifying the wrong in a way that will prevent others from falling into those same pitfalls that he did when he was younger and less cautious. Because, he says, the temptation to cut corners and to earn easy money is always waiting just around the bend. The yetzer hara whispers in a person’s ear about all kinds of different heterim and halachic leniencies that ultimately lead him to do terrible things.