Retired judge accused of corruption dead in shootout after FBI comes for him

Stewart Rosenwasser, a former county court judge in Orange County, New York, shot and killed himself as FBI agents came to arrest him on a corruption and extortion indictment Tuesday. His death followed an exchange of gunfire with the approaching agents, according to WABC News and others. Rosenwasser's most recent work was at the District Attorney's office there, where he was accused of taking $63,000 in bribes from restaurateur Mout'z Soudani. According to the indictment, Soudani paid Rosenwasser to investigate two relatives of his and to keep him informed of developments in the case.

"It's truly heartbreaking that it ended this way.  My heartfelt condolences go out to his family," Orange County DA David Hoovler said.

If $63k seems like a lot to get this wound up about, given that a sitting Supreme Court justice won't get out of bed for anything less than a Winnebago Vista National Parks Special Edition, perhaps that's just the one they were hauling him in on. Rosenwasser served as a judge for seven years from 1999 to 2006.

When he retired in 2006, the former judge, known as "Maximum Stew" for handing out stiff sentences to violent criminals, said one of his reasons for a new career path was not getting a raise on his salary of six-figure salary for seven years, the Times Herald-Record reported.

"I became a prosecutor to make more money" rings alarm bells, doesn't it?