Former Woodmere fire commissioner sentenced

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A former Woodmere fire commissioner was sentenced in connection with a scheme involving falsified court documents to bring multimillion dollar lawsuits, officials said.

Judah Karkowsky was convicted in April for knowingly using a falsified court transcript related to a previous misdemeanor case to file lawsuits against the Woodmere Fire District and Fire Department and Nassau County seeking tens of millions of dollars in compensation, according to . Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly. The defendant had also sent the falsified transcript to a representative synagogue in attempt regain full access to the synagogue after a misdemeanor sex abuse case against him was dismissed on procedural grounds.

“Shunned from the Synagogue where he worshiped after a sex abuse charge was levied against him, this defendant falsified court paperwork that he presented to a member of his Synagogue’s leadership to get back into their good graces,” Donnelly said in a written statement.

“Karkowsky fabricated language that he boldly attributed to a sitting judge giving a fictitious narrative for the dismissal of his case,” Donnelly added. “The defendant later doubled down on this deceit by using the language he concocted to file multi-million-dollar lawsuits against Nassau County and the Woodmere Fire District and Department claiming he was falsely arrested and prosecuted. This defendant’s actions were a flagrant attack on the integrity of the criminal justice system – something this office will not stand for. With today’s sentence, Karkowsky is now being held accountable by the same justice system he sought to undermine.”

As LIBN reported in April, Karkowsky was a volunteer emergency medical technician in the Woodmere Fire Department wo was arrested in September of 2021, for two misdemeanor offenses, including a sex abuse charge. After his arrest, he  was suspended from the fire department. The misdemeanor case was dismissed in May of 2022 because of a violation that required the people to be ready for trial within 90 days of the defendant’s arraignment on the charges.

Karkowsky ordered a copy of the minutes, or court transcript, from the court appearance in which Nassau County District Court Judge Douglas Lerose ordered that the case be dismissed and explained the procedural grounds for the dismissal.

In May of 2022, officials said, Karkowsky sent a photograph of a page of the minutes to the co-chairman of the board of trustees at his synagogue that included a sentence that did not appear in the original, official minutes of the proceeding. The sentence said, “Notwithstanding, this court has believed for some time that the People’s case lacked substance and should not have reached this point.”

At trial, Lerose testified that he never said the words in the forged transcript, and the official court reporter testified that he had not transcribe those words. An audio recording of the court proceeding confirmed that Lerose had not made that comment, the DA’s office said.

Officials say that Karkowsky intended to use the forged minutes to convince the leadership of the synagogue that his case was dismissed on merit, that he was innocent of the charges and that he should be welcomed back to the synagogue. He was reinstated to the Woodmere Fire Department after his case was dismissed but was not allowed to return to the synagogue.

In August of 2022, Karkowsky served a notice of claim on the Woodmere Fire District and Fire Department seeking $15 million in compensation, claiming that members of the fire department caused him to be falsely arrested. The notice of claim quoted the fraudulent statement attributed to the judge from the May 2022 minutes as evidence of Karkowsky’s innocence. Karkowsky swore before a public notary to the contents of the statements in the notice of claim.

He also served a notice of claim on Nassau County seeking another $15 million in compensation, alleging that members of the Nassau Police Department and district attorney’s office willfully ignored exculpatory evidence.