A former Hudson Valley prosecutor and judge died by suicide Tuesday morning at his home as the FBI closed in to arrest him on bribery charges.
Stewart Rosenwasser, a prosecutor in Orange County until June, shot at FBI agents from his home in Campbell Hall before turning the gun on himself, sources told the Albany Times-Union.
Rosenwasser was wanted in connection with a bribery case, in which he was accused of taking $48,000 from a man to prosecute the man’s sister and nephew, according to the Times-Union. He worked in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office at the time.
Mout’z “Marty” Soudani paid Rosenwasser on several occasions throughout 2022 and 2023, according to private and public investigators. The FBI was handling the case against Soudani and Rosenwasser, which was brought to light by Soudani’s sister, Eman, and nephew, Martin.
“This case may present the most blatant example of prosecutorial corruption and fraud in the annals of New York case law,” Eman and Martin Soudani claimed, according to the Times-Union.
Mout’z Soudani accused his sister and nephew of stealing $1.9 million from him in October 2022. Martin Soudani eventually pleaded guilty to swiping $1.6 million from his uncle and served two months in prison. The charges against Eman Soudani were dropped.
But the entire case was prosecuted because Mout’z Soudani paid Rosenwasser to go after his family members, according to federal investigators.
Eman and Martin Soudani said throughout the case, the legal system lurched into action against them whenever Mout’z Soudani cut Rosenwasser a new check, the Times-Union reported. Payments lined up with grand jury subpoenas, search warrants and Martin Soudani’s arraignment in April 2023, according to court documents filed by Eman and Martin Soudani.
The FBI has not released the details of its own investigation, but Eman and Martin Soudani described the scheme in notices of claim, which alert people that they are about to face a lawsuit in civil court.
Their suit has not yet been filed, but the notices of claim were given to Rosenwasser and several members of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, according to the Times-Union.
Before joining the office, Rosenwasser had extensive criminal justice experience in Orange County, including six years on the bench as an Orange County judge, many years of private practice and a previous stint in the DA’s office in the 1970s.