Nachman Helbrans Case: Conviction, Sentence, and 2025 Appeal

The Nachman Helbrans case is the federal prosecution of the former leader of the Lev Tahor sect for orchestrating the December 2018 kidnapping of two children from their mother’s home in Woodridge, New York, in order to smuggle a 13-year-old girl back to Mexico and resume her sexual relationship with an adult man. A jury in the Southern District of New York convicted Helbrans in November 2021, U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Román sentenced him to 12 years in prison in March 2022, and the Second Circuit affirmed the conviction in April 2025.¹

Who Nachman Helbrans Is

Nachman Helbrans is the son of Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, who founded Lev Tahor, an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, in Israel in the late 1980s. The group later moved through Brooklyn, Quebec, Ontario, and eventually Mexico and Guatemala. When Shlomo Helbrans drowned in a river in the Mexican state of Chiapas in July 2017, Nachman assumed control.²

Federal prosecutors said that after taking over, Helbrans and his leadership team tightened control over the sect and embraced practices including child marriages and underage sex for the purpose of procreation.³

The Underlying Conduct

In 2017, shortly after becoming leader, Helbrans arranged for his 12-year-old niece, identified in court records as Minor-1, to be religiously married to an 18-year-old man. The marriage was not legally recognized. By 2018, when Minor-1 was 13 and the man was 19, sect leaders required them to begin a sexual relationship. Young brides in Lev Tahor were instructed to conceal their marriages from outsiders, lie about their ages, and deliver babies at home instead of in hospitals to avoid detection.¹

In October 2018, the children’s mother escaped the Lev Tahor compound in Guatemala. She reached the United States with her children by early November, and a Brooklyn family court granted her sole custody and barred the children’s father, himself a sect leader, from contact.³

In December 2018, Helbrans and his top lieutenant, Mayer Rosner, orchestrated the middle-of-the-night abduction of Minor-1 and her 12-year-old brother from their mother’s home in Woodridge, New York. The goal was to smuggle Minor-1 back to Guatemala to resume the sexual relationship with her now-20-year-old “husband.” The operation used disguises, aliases, disposable phones, fake travel documents, and encrypted communications. The children were transported across the U.S. border into Mexico before law enforcement recovered them after a three-week search.¹ Prosecutors identified additional, unsuccessful attempts by Lev Tahor members to seize the children again in March 2019 and March 2021.⁴

The Charges and Conviction

Helbrans was arrested on December 27, 2018. He and Rosner were tried together in a four-week jury trial before Judge Román in the Southern District of New York’s White Plains courthouse. On November 10, 2021, the jury convicted both men on all counts.³ Helbrans was found guilty of:

Conspiring to transport a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity
Conspiring to travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct
Two counts of international parental kidnapping
Conspiring to commit international parental kidnapping, unlawfully use a means of identification, and enter an airport’s secure area by false pretenses
An additional count of international parental kidnapping tied to an attempted abduction in March 2019

During trial, Judge Román issued a written ruling declaring the religious marriage between Minor-1 and the adult man invalid.⁵

The Sentence

On March 31, 2022, Judge Román sentenced Helbrans and Rosner to 12 years in prison each, followed by five years of supervised release. The conspiracy count alone carried a mandatory minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life.¹

At sentencing, prosecutors told the court that Helbrans had “not shown one ounce of remorse for his conduct” and that “there is every indication that if he is released he will commit the same crime again.” Helbrans said he was being punished for being “a loyal Jew” and compared his prosecution to the persecution of Jews by the Roman Empire.⁶

The 2025 Appeal

On April 8, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a summary order in United States v. Helbrans et al. affirming the convictions of Helbrans, Rosner, Mordechay Malka, and Matityau Moshe Malka. The court rejected the defendants’ argument that Minor-1 was legally married under Guatemalan law, holding that the 2018 religious marriage of a 13-year-old to an adult man was “void and had no legal effect” under Guatemalan law. The panel also found that the International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act was not unconstitutionally vague as applied and that the defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights were not violated by how the district court handled their decisions to represent themselves at trial.⁷

Co-Defendants

The federal case involved nine defendants in total. After the November 2021 verdicts, cousins Mordechay Malka and Matityau Moshe Malka were tried separately. Mordechay had assisted the December 2018 kidnapping on the ground, smuggling a phone to the children and helping move them with fake travel documents. Matityau met the fugitives in Mexico and took part in a second attempted kidnapping in Brooklyn in March 2019. A jury convicted both in June 2022, and they were sentenced to 66 months and 57 months in prison respectively, inclusive of time served.⁸

The final three defendants, brothers Yakov, Shmiel, and Yoil Weingarten, were extradited from Guatemala in 2022. Prosecutors identified them as members of the sect’s “Hanhala,” or governing leadership. Shmiel purchased disguises at a Walmart and drove the children to an airport in Scranton, Pennsylvania; Yoil received them in Mexico; Yakov later attempted a second kidnapping and threatened the children’s mother. A jury convicted all three in March 2024 after a five-week trial. On July 9, 2024, Judge Román sentenced Yakov and Shmiel to 14 years each and Yoil to 12 years, each followed by five years of supervised release. Prosecutors cited aggravating conduct including obstruction of justice, false information, witness tampering, and perjury.⁹

Lev Tahor After Helbrans’ Imprisonment

Helbrans’ incarceration did not end scrutiny of the sect. On December 20, 2024, Guatemalan police raided a Lev Tahor farm in Oratorio, southeast of Guatemala City, and removed 160 children amid allegations of forced pregnancy, mistreatment of minors, and rape. A prosecutor from Guatemala’s office against human trafficking said investigations had established human trafficking including forced marriage and abuse.¹⁰¹¹ Two days later, roughly 100 sect members stormed a care facility trying to reclaim the children, and police relocated the minors.

On November 22, 2025, Colombian authorities raided a hotel in Yarumal, Colombia, and detained 26 Lev Tahor members, nine adults and 17 children. Five of the children held U.S. and Guatemalan passports and were subject to Interpol yellow notices for missing or abducted minors. Colombian immigration officials said the group had arrived in October 2025 and was looking for rural property for a new compound. On December 2, 2025, all 26 were flown to New York, where U.S. officials received the adults and Child Protective Services took custody of the children.¹²

Former members have also worked to extract relatives. In mid-August 2025, a mother, her husband, and their nine children reached Israel after a coordinated effort involving brothers who had earlier escaped the sect, Israeli government agencies, and the Jewish Agency. According to one account, nine infants had died from malnutrition within Lev Tahor in the five years before the report, and at least one parent, the father of two of the rescuing brothers, died after allegedly being denied critical medical care on Nachman Helbrans’ orders.¹³

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Two Senior Leaders of Lev Tahor Sect Sentenced to 12 Years in Prison for Kidnapping and Sex Offenses
2
The Forward. Leader of Fringe Haredi Orthodox Sect Lev Tahor Drowned in Mexico
3
U.S. Department of Justice. Top Lev Tahor Leaders Convicted at Trial of Child Sexual Exploitation and Kidnapping
4
Business Insider. Lev Tahor Leaders Sentenced for Kidnapping Teen Girl for Illegal Marriage
5
NBC New York. Two Members of Extremist Jewish Sect Convicted of Kidnapping, Sex Crimes
6
Times of Israel. Lev Tahor Cult Leader Sentenced to 12 Years for Kidnapping, Child Exploitation
7
CaseMine. United States v. Helbrans et al.
8
Times of Israel. Two More Members of Lev Tahor Cult Sentenced Over 2018 Kidnapping
9
U.S. Department of Justice. Senior Leaders of Lev Tahor Sect Sentenced to 14 and 12 Years in Prison for Kidnapping and Sex Offenses
10
BBC News. Lev Tahor Sect Children Rescued in Guatemala
11
Bishop-Accountability.org. Guatemalan Authorities Rescue 160 Children From Jewish Lev Tahor Sect
12
Border Report. Colombia Expels Members of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Sect Lev Tahor
13
Ynet News. Rescue of Levy Family From Lev Tahor