By Dovid Rifkin

 

The small-time social media influencer who was removed from BMG last week as he tried filming a video exposing alleged fraud in the Lakewood community has posted his video, in which he uncovers…nothing at all.

 

“I drove four hours to investigate,” the influencer, whose name is Santiago and goes by the name “Santi” on YouTube (57K subscribers) and “theegoodamerican” on Instagram (9K followers) breathlessly declares in a video titled “I investigated New Jersey’s Jewish Fraud Scandal.” It appears to have been a wasted trip.

 

Santi was apparently inspired by Tyler Oliveira, the YouTube influencer (8.7 million followers) who posted a video alleging welfare abuse by Jews in Kiryas Joel but was unable to find any fraud there either. Oliveira had then said he wanted to visit Lakewood next. Santi spoke approvingly of Oliveira on his own page, and then, it seems, decided to beat Oliveira to Lakewood, visiting last Tuesday. (Oliveira visited the area on Friday; he was seen in Jackson with antisemitic town councilman Chris Pollak. His video wasn’t released yet.)

 

In Santi’s video, as he drives into town, he ticks off a litany of complaints against Lakewood, including that “families average six kids,” high poverty rates, many people on Medicaid, and that “the driving here is terrible.” It seems Santi isn’t too familiar with densely populated areas in New York and New Jersey. It’s unlikely he’s ever even spent time in the Garden State, as he notes with astonishment that gas stations here are full-service.

 

Santi walks into BMG’s Beren building during bein hasedarim, just after Minchah. The beis medrash is mostly empty but for a few people davening a long Shemoneh Esrei.

 

Nearly everyone avoids him, but one talmid answers a few questions, politely explaining that some kollel members go to work after a few years of learning and others are supported by family members.

 

“I’m not getting no answers in this building,” an exasperated Santi says to his camera after multiple fruitless attempts at interviews.

 

Finally, after finding out that it’s lunchtime, he goes to the dining room, where he exclaims, “I saw the craziest thing—hundreds of Jewish students eating in the cafeteria.” One wonders what he expected to see during lunchtime in what he correctly describes as “the second-largest yeshivah in the world.”

 

His joyride in BMG is interrupted there, as he’s met by a security guard and escorted out of the building.

Then Santi heads over to the Municipal Building to sign up for food stamps and Medicaid.

 

While waiting, he schmoozes with a yungerman about the benefits system. By this point, having realized nobody will talk on camera, he seems to be employing a secret camera. He highlights the man’s quote regarding government programs that “the poorer you are the more you’ll get,” which is a revelation to no one but Santi. He tries asking the man if it’s possible to misuse EBT funds for other things, but the man says he’s unaware of anything like that.

 

Meanwhile, Santi himself signs up for benefits in the office, under a fake name … to prove what? That anyone can sign up for these benefits? There are benefits offices in every town in America. The only fraud committed throughout the 22-minute video is the one Santi apparently committed when he filled out a phony benefits application.

 

He then goes to FoodEx, where he asks a Hispanic worker if the store accepts EBT. Assured that it does, Santi asks, “Would you say that, like, most of the people who use it are Jewish people?” This distinguished journalist has given us the earth-shattering revelation that most of the people who use EBT in a kosher supermarket in a town that in his own words “90 percent are Orthodox Jews,” are, wait for it…Jewish people. Wow. So are most of the people who pay with cash and credit in FoodEx. So are most of the people who buy bread and milk in FoodEx.

 

Hand the man a Pulitzer for his groundbreaking investigative report.

 

Leaving FoodEx and passing a police car, Santi then tosses off a comment about how Lakewood police are corrupt because they “accept tax dollars and they work overtime for the Jewish community.” Still trying to figure that one out.

 

Santi claims the Jewish community gets zoning laws passed that “the locals aren’t so happy about.” I’m not sure whom he considers to be “the locals” in what he describes as “the most populated Jewish community in America.”

 

He spends the final third of the video interviewing a Brick resident named Michael, who opposes Jewish expansion in the area.

“What happens here makes Minnesota look tiny,” Michael says, referring to the actual multibillion-dollar welfare fraud by a minority community in America.

Michael and Santi’s discussion largely centers around a zoning fight over a mikveh in Manchester.

“If the town says no, they sue, and because of the laws, they usually get approved,” Michael says. “This is only going to service one group of people.

“It feels like one group is getting special privilege. Before you know it, [the area is] going to be majority one religion.”

 

Michael is right about one thing: the laws do give special privileges. But it’s a federal law, called RLUIPA (Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, signed in 2000 by President Bill Clinton after passing both houses of Congress unanimously). And it doesn’t favor Jews, but religious activity in general, essentially granting religious buildings certain exemptions from zoning laws.

 

Which means that Michael and Santi are either too stupid or too deceitful to mention that if they want to open a church in the same area where this proposed mikveh is, they’d get the same privileges.

 

Well, that’s all there is in this video. Santi says this “won’t be my last” visit to Lakewood, and “I will return for Part 2.” Maybe next time he’ll discover that most of the Lakewood residents who wear black hats are in fact Jewish.

 

Running around for hours in a fruitless search sure can make a man hungry, and as the video ends, Santi winds up the day with a chicken shawarma at Ishtabach in Toms River, which gets his hearty approval.

 

I guess the eight-hour round trip wasn’t a total waste after all.