An Israeli man who brokered black- market sales of human kidneys in the U.S. arranged transplant surgeries at medical centers, including Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, according to five people familiar with the case. Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, 60, pleaded guilty yesterday to three counts of organ trafficking and one count of conspiracy, becoming the first person convicted in the U.S. of organ trafficking. A 1984 U.S. law bans the sale of human organs. He said in federal court in Trenton, New Jersey, that three ailing people paid him a total $410,000 to arrange the sale of kidneys from healthy donors, and an undercover FBI agent paid him $10,000.
