MONMOUTH COUNTY — In worship services, Rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim used to lecture on the need for his congregants to be upstanding and moral.

At the same time, he was secretly laundering at least $1.5 million through various charities in an elaborate international underground banking system and keeping a large cut of the ill-gotten gains.

One of the last of the high-profile suspects in a massive federal sting operation, Ben Haim was sentenced today to five years in prison as the federal government nears the conclusion of its extensive investigation into money laundering and public corruption in New Jersey.

"You were operating as a community leader, a religious leader and a family man," U.S. District Judge Joel Pisano said before imposing the sentence in Trenton. "At the same time you were holding yourself out in a false light."

The prominent Monmouth County rabbi admitted in June 2010 to laundering $1.5 million through his congregation’s charities in a scheme that used a disabled member of the Syrian Jewish community — also sentenced today — as a conduit for the cash.

The portly rabbi, wearing a dark suit and yarmulke, admitted he laundered $1.5 million from disgraced developer Solomon Dwek on 35 occasions from October 2006 to July 2009, when he was arrested along with more than 44 other suspects in a multi-pronged investigation with Dwek, a cooperating witness, at the nexis.

Ben Haim wired the money — minus his 10-percent commission — to contacts in countries that included Israel, Japan, China, Turkey and Uganda, before it came back to the United States "clean," authorities have said.

Saying his criminal behavior was contrary to his life’s good works, Ben Haim, 60, of Long Branch, asked Pisano for mercy in meting out his punishment. His voice breaking, Ben Haim said he contemplated suicide after his arrest.

"My emotion and desire to help someone overtook my better judgment," Ben Haim said before a courtroom packed with more than 50 of his relatives and members of his congregation. "I would like to continue being a productive citizen in society and not a burden. Please grant me that."

Ben Haim’s attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, asked for probation or minimal prison time because he said Ben Haim’s charitable works, including allowing recovering drug addicts to live in his home, far outweigh the crime he committed.

"This is a man about whom there is so much good," he said.

Reading from some of the 180 letters he received on Ben Haim’s behalf, Pisano said many of the authors — who blamed Dwek for Ben Haim’s downfall — "didn’t understand what you did."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen Nakly said Dwek, who recorded conversations as a cooperating witness for the FBI, did not entice Ben Haim into money laundering. Rather, the FBI "tapped into" an existing criminal operation, she said. The crime was particularly egregious because Ben Haim was not concerned the money was ostensibly from illegal activities and would be used to fund criminal enterprises, Nakly said.

Earlier in the day, Pisano sentenced Aliva Aryeh Weiss, 57, of Brooklyn, to five years of probation for operating a cash house where people picked up money that had been laundered or dropped off cash to be cleaned. But Pisano ordered Weiss, who suffers from Asperger syndrome and who the judge said had lived a solitary life in squalor, to reside in a mental health facility.

Related coverage:

• Prominent rabbi from Deal admits money laundering in N.J. corruption sting

• Judge denies trip to Israel for rabbi charged in N.J. corruption sting

• Full coverage of the New Jersey corruption probe

