ByJennifer Lipman, Jennifer Lipman
A women charged with participating in an extensive and long-running conspiracy to defraud an the organisation that supports needy Holocaust survivors has been sentences to a year and day in jail.
Polina Anoshina was the first of 17 people convicted for their roles in the £25 million scam against the Claims Conference.
Over 15 years, some 5,500 fraudulent claims were made, before the scam was finally identified last year.
Ms Anoshina, a 63-year-old Russian immigrant who was said to have recruited friends and family to help with the fraud as well as helped a non Jewish person take money from the fund, was ordered by the court to pay back around £65,000.
According to the New York Post, the prosecutor told the court that Ms Anoshina should receive a heavy sentence for lining her own pockets out of the "unspeakable tragedy of Hitler and the Nazi regime."
The chairman of the Claims Conference, Julius Berman, thanked the US authorities for their dedication to the case.