Rabbi Yehuda Hadjadj, Conspiracy to Defraud Qualcomm, California 2022

Rabbi Yehuda Hadjadj, the director of Chabad at the University of California, San Diego, pleaded guilty in federal court on January 26, 2022, to conspiring with former Chabad of Poway Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein and at least three other individuals to defraud Qualcomm’s corporate matching program.

According to the plea agreement, Hadjadj fraudulently obtained funds from Qualcomm’s corporate matching program for Chabad at UCSD, by inducing at least three donors to make sham donations to Friendship Circle, a non-sectarian organization run at the time by Rabbi Goldstein. To conceal the true recipient of the matched funds, Hadjadj told the donors to write checks to Friendship Circle. At the time, or shortly after the donor wrote the check, Hadjadj returned all or most of the donation in cash. The donors would nonetheless request that Qualcomm match the sham donation.

Hadjadj recruited at least two additional donors to engage in this scheme. Hadjadj fraudulently obtained approximately $40,000 for Chabad at UCSD over the course of the scheme.

In total, Hadjadj met with one of the donors eleven times to give him cash in exchange for sham matched donations to Friendship Circle. One instance involved a $4,900 sham donation, where Hadjadj gave the donor $4,400 in cash shortly after the donation was made.

Rabbi Goldstein pleaded guilty to fraud charges in July 2020, admitting that he participated in a complex, years-long, multi-million-dollar tax-evasion scheme and other financial deceptions involving theft of public money. Rabbi Goldstein’s plea agreement outlined the fraud scheme with Hadjadj.

Hadjadj is the tenth individual to plead guilty to crimes discovered in this investigation. Two additional individuals agreed to deferred prosecution agreements as a result of the investigation. ‘Rabbi Hadjadj violated his position of trust within our community and took advantage of a corporate program meant to encourage employee charitable donations,’ said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman. ‘Fraud has no place in fundraising, and those who use lies and dishonesty to obtain money, whether for themselves or for an organization, will be held to account for their crimes.’

Hadjadj is currently awaiting sentencing, with a hearing scheduled for a later date. The case highlights the importance of corporate matching programs and the need for strict oversight to prevent such schemes from occurring in the future.

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