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Mordechay Malka, age 27, and Matitau Malka, age 30, both US citizens from Guatemala who are members of the extremist Jewish sect Lev Torah, were convicted on multiple charges following a four-week trial in White Plains federal court.
Federal prosecutors said that the Malkas participated in a scheme to kidnap a 14-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy in Sullivan County from their mother in Woodridge in December 2018.
The kidnappers then smuggled the children across the US border to Mexico, where they reunited the girl with her adult “husband,” who she had religiously “married” when she was just 13 years old.
US Attorney Damian Williams said that after the children were recovered and returned to their mother, the Malkas and their co-conspirators tried to kidnap the children a second time in March 2019.
Two co-conspirators, Nachman Helbrans and Mayer Rosner, were previously convicted of kidnapping and sexual exploitation charges in connection with this case after an October 2021 trial and have each been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In October 2018, the girl’s mother determined that it was no longer safe for her children to remain in the Lev Tahor community in Guatemala, and she escaped to the United States the following year, eventually settling in Sullivan County.
In 2018, a Brooklyn family court judge also granted her sole custody of the children and prohibited the children’s father, a leader within Lev Tahor, from communicating with the children, officials noted.
Williams said that after the family fled Guatemala, Mordechay Malta and other Lev Tahor members conspired to return the minors to their community.
In December 2018, investigators said that the children were kidnapped in the middle of the night from their upstate New York home and transported through multiple states and into Mexico.
According to prosecutors, Mordechay Malka and others used disguises, aliases, drop phones, fake travel documents, an encrypted application, and a secret pact to execute on their kidnapping plan.
At the time of the kidnapping, officials made note that Lev Tahor leadership was seeking asylum for the entire Lev Tahor community in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
A three-week search was launched involving hundreds of local, federal, and international law enforcement agencies before they were recovered in Mexico and returned to New York.
At least two other kidnapping attempts were made by members of Lev Tahor in 2019 and 2021 as they sought to take the children back below the border, including one while Helbrans was incarcerated in Westchester.
Specifically, both were convicted of:
- Conspiring to commit international parental kidnapping;
- Unlawful using a means of identification;
- Entering a secure area of an airport with false pretenses.
Mordechay Malka was also convicted of two counts of international parental kidnapping, and Matityau Malta was guilty of one count of the same charge.
When they are sentenced, both face years in prison. No return court date has been announced.
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