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The FBI faced a four-level language barrier in its investigation of the Deal and Brooklyn-based money laundering outfits: Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic, and yeshivish.

On July 23, 44 arrests were made as part of a sweeping corruption bust involving five rabbis and 10 other members of the Syrian Jewish communities in Monmouth County and New York. The rabbis stand accused of running an international money laundering ring, brought to light by the cooperation of indicted real estate mogul Solomon Dwek.

But it turned out Dwek did more than just help set up sting operations as the FBI's confidential informant; he translated the multilingual Jewish slang used by the targets of the investigation -- lingo that most Orthodox Jews and European immigrants would recognize if they heard around shul or a Talmud shiur, but language unfamiliar to most people outside the Jewish world.

To get the sting operations rolling, the federal agents needed Dwek to have a cover story. The agents may not, however, have recognized their cover story when Dwek used it with Moshe Altman, a real estate developer based in Hudson County who was involved in both the corruption and money laundering aspects of the case.

On May 21, 2007, Dwek met Altman at Altman's place of business in Union City, where Dwek gave Altman a check for $18,000 he needed "cleaned." When Altman wondered where the money came from, Dwek responded, "basically, guy owes me money from bank deals, 'schnookie' bank deals no one knows about and no one could know about."

Dwek's use of the word "schnookie" is a form of a Yiddish word. Natalya Belinsky's online "Everyday Yiddish-English-Yiddish Dictionary" has seven possible spellings for the word: schnook, shnoock, schnoock, shnuk, shnuck, schnuk, schnuck. The word, according to Belinsky, means "A person easily imposed upon, cheated or pitifully meek; a gullible simpleton more to be pitied than despised. Example: Don't be such an apologetic shnook!"

Dwek continued to use the word with other alleged co-conspirators, such as David Goldhirsh and Itzak Friedlander, referring to bank deals in which he obtained a loan from the bank on non-existent property. The "schnook," here, is the bank.

Other popular phrases included one normally heard in Talmud class, which came up during Dwek's conversations with Mordchai Fish, the rabbi of Congregation Sheves Achim in Brooklyn. The two would call money "Gemoras," the Aramaic word for the Talmud. Meeting to exchange money was referred to as "learning."

Here is one such exchange from the FBI complaint: "On or about February 5, 2009, the CW (cooperating witness Dwek) received an interstate telephone call in New Jersey from defendant FISH in New York, during which defendant FISH and the CW discussed 'gemoras' -- a code word used by defendant FISH to refer to cash.

"Defendant FISH was informed by the CW that 'I have some... gemoras or whatever, you know.' The CW further told defendant FISH that the CW had '[m]aybe 25 or something,' a reference to $25,000 in cash. ... The CW then asked defendant FISH 'get me the, you know, the name for the gemora, and then I'll take care of it.' Defendant FISH then asked 'when do you want to learn,' a coded reference to when the money laundering transaction would occur. ... At the conclusion of the conversation, the CW asked defendant FISH to '[l]et me know -- Sunday, Monday, the name of the gemora,' in order to find out to what organization or individual the CW should make out the $25,000 bank check."

Another Yiddish term thrown around was "shmear." It was used by Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who stands accused of trafficking in human organs for transplant purposes. Rosenbaum paid the kidney donor $10,000 for the kidney, but charged $160,000 to the recipient. When asked about the markup, Rosenbaum said, "One of the reasons it's so expensive is because you have to shmear all the time," by which he meant there were a lot of middle men to pay, and he had to shmear -- or "spread" -- the money around.

The term "gemach," an acronym for the Hebrew "gemilat chasadim," or "acts of kindness," was used throughout the conversations between the accused parties to refer to the charitable organizations they were to make the checks out to. The rabbis at the head of those "gemachs" would then refund most of that money in a new check, enabling the "donor" to receive a tax write-off for his original donation, while still retaining up to 90 percent of the money.

Dwek also had to translate Hebrew for the FBI officers occasionally, since some of the middle men were Israeli and all the organ donors, according to Rosenbaum, were Israeli.

In addition to using language to cloak their activities, some of the accused, including Rabbi Eliyahu Ben Haim and Arye Weiss, tried to hide the cash during transactions in various unusual containers. This led to two exchanges of $97,000 in a box of Apple Jacks cereal, and one exchange of about $45,000 in a box covered in the logo of the Power Rangers, a children's television series and its associated toys.