The Most Efficient Way to Ensure a Reservation in Hell

There are many ways to qualify for a spot in Hell -- murdering, raping, pillaging, cable-TV-show-hosting -- but the best way, it seems to this blog, is to steal money that actually belongs to survivors of the Holocaust:

Over 16 years, the suspects used fake identification documents, doctored government records and a knowledge of Holocaust history to defraud the fund of more than $42 million, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday by the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara.

The defendants, the indictment says, would recruit applicants -- many of them from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn -- through Russian-language newspapers, offering help to people applying for compensation from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. In many cases, the immigrants' actual experiences would be manipulated or tailored to fit the requirements of the fund; once the payments were approved, the defendants would receive kickbacks from the applicants, according to the indictment.