- Three leaders of the Lev Tahor sect sentenced to over a decade in prison for kidnapping two children, including a child bride, and smuggling them into Mexico.
- The cult, known for child marriages used disguises and aliases in a sophisticated kidnapping scheme, prompting a massive search and eventual rescue of the children.
Leaders of a Jewish fundamentalist cult have been sentenced to over a decade in prison for kidnapping two children, including a child bride, and smuggling them into Mexico, prosecutors said. Three brothers, members of the Lev Tahor sect, allegedly forced the girl back into the arms of her adult “husband” in a sophisticated sex scheme.
Yakov Weingarten, 34; Smiel Weingarten, 28; and Yoil Weingarten, 36, were sentenced Tuesday for abducting the children from their upstate New York home in 2018 after their mother fled Lev Tahor.
The group is notorious for practices like child marriages, underage sex, and family separations, according to US Attorney Damian Williams.
The brothers, who reside in Guatemala, used disguises, aliases, burner phones, fake travel documents, and encrypted apps to execute the 3 a.m. kidnapping in December, smuggling the siblings across the border.
Authorities launched a massive three-week search that eventually located Yante Teller, 14, and Chaim Teller, 12, and returned them to their mother.
In March, a federal jury convicted the trio on charges of child sexual exploitation and kidnapping. US District Judge Nelson Román sentenced Yakov and Smiel to 14 years in prison and Yoil to 12 years.
“The sentencing of the Weingarten brothers holds them accountable for kidnapping children from their mother in the middle of the night, including for the purpose of coercing a child into a sexual relationship with an adult,” Williams said in a statement. “This Office will do everything in its power to protect children and use every available tool to investigate and prosecute those who sexually exploit them.”
The case began in 2017, when Lev Tahor leaders arranged for Yante, then 12, to marry an 18-year-old man. Despite the marriage not being legal, Lev Tahor leadership, including the three Weingartens, demanded the two have sex and lie about their ages and relationship.
“Lev Tahor leaders instructed child brides to deliver babies inside their homes instead of at a hospital to conceal the mothers’ young ages from outsiders,” the statement said.
The children’s mother, Sara Helbrans, fled the community compound in Guatemala in October 2018, deciding it was no longer safe for her kids. It was the only life she had ever known; her father, Shlomo Helbrans, founded the group in Jerusalem in 1987.
Eventually, all six of her children joined her, and a Brooklyn family court banned their father, another cult leader, from communicating with them.
“I am very imminently afraid from the cult and what the [children’s] father and other cult members may do now that we are no longer under their power and manipulation,” the frantic mother wrote in a court filing.
The Weingartens then hatched a plan to kidnap Chaim and Yante and bring them back to Guatemala and Yante’s 20-year-old “husband,” prosecutors claimed.
Their plan was initially successful. They kidnapped the children in the middle of the night, forced them out of their home in Woodridge, New York, and flew them out of an airport in Scranton, Pennsylvania, reuniting the teen with her husband and allowing him to continue his illegal sexual relationship with her.
Authorities found them three weeks later and freed the children in Tenango del Aire, near Mexico City, returning them to New York. However, the zealots made further attempts to kidnap the children in 2019 and 2021, Williams said.
The cult settled in Brooklyn in 1994, but the founder, Shlomo Helbrans, was convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy and later deported. The group, consisting of about 40 families, fled to Canada, then Guatemala, and has faced numerous accusations of child neglect.
