'Jewish Indiana Jones': I Made My Exploits Up

A man calling himself the "Jewish Indiana Jones", boasting that he travelled the world to rescue holy Torah scrolls, has admitted making his exploits up.

Rabbi Menachem Youlus, 50, told a court he had told lies between 2004 and 2010 about obtaining vintage scrolls in Europe and Israel to get funds from his charity and some of its contributors.

He even told prospective buyers that he had personally retrieved parts of one scroll from a metal box at Auschwitz - something he has now admitted was not true.

Prosecutors said Youlus, who owns a Jewish bookshop in the state of Maryland, had defrauded Save A Torah, the charity he founded and its donors out of $862,000 (£545,000).

At a 2004 Torah dedication, Youlus wrote: "I guess you could call me the Jewish Indiana Jones."

In fact, the prosecution said, he had rarely travelled abroad during the time he claimed to be looking for rare scrolls.

At the US District Court in Manhattan, where Youlus was charged with mail and wire fraud, the prosecution said he had made up detailed accounts of exploits to recover Torahs lost or hidden during the Holocaust, including at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

According to a criminal complaint, Youlus distributed Torahs he bought from US dealers to synagogues and congregations throughout the country, sometimes at inflated rates as a result of the lies.

Almost a third of the $1.2m (£760,000) he made from the sales went into his own bank account.

The prosecution's case against Youlus alleges that he spent some of the proceeds on private school tuition for his children and on personal expenses, including meals and health care.

"I know what I did was wrong, and I deeply regret my conduct," Youlus told the court.

In a statement, Youlus' lawyer Benjamin Brafman said he would seek leniency at a June 21 sentencing, calling him "a good man with the best of intentions who ultimately strayed into fraudulent conduct that he now accepts full responsibility for".