Oy, The Things She Hears in Court

Arms dealing. Corruption. Family drama. All in Yiddish—and the only person on call to translate it is one spritely 71-year-old woman in Queens.

Photos by Maureen Drennan

In 2007, Moses “Mark” Stern borrowed $126 million dollars from the investment firm Citigroup. Stern is a father of eight, who has a full beard and wears a yarmulke in the center of a ring of frizzy unclipped brown hair. As a young man, he emigrated from his birth country of Argentina, where he belonged to the Orthodox Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, to live in the Hasidic community in Monsey, New York.

Stern was a real estate developer who, according to the New York Post, had a taste for Maseratis and Ferraris. He borrowed the money with the intention of buying eleven shopping malls. Through his business connections, Stern had become a longtime backroom political player in New York State politics. The ambitious deal failed, Stern’s company went bankrupt, Citigroup sued him, and the court ruled against Stern. The FBI approached him with a deal: wear a wire and get a reduced sentence.

Wearing a wire, Stern met the mayor of Spring Valley, New York at a hotel and as…