For years, the scheme worked, and the pension money flowed into the greedy son's pocket, but the fraudster's carelessness led to his exposure. The images reveal why. The man, a resident of the city where the transfer was carried out, is now under investigation for fraud, impersonation, and concealment of a body.

The fraud was exposed after the son attempted to renew his mother's expired identity card. Several details trapped the son and raised authorities' suspicions: the thick neck, the skin on his hands, and, finally, the strange voice with which he spoke to the clerks. A registry office employee examining the case was not convinced. Then, Borgo Virgilio police noticed the "woman," supposedly elderly, who had no driver's license, driving a vehicle.

The photos submitted to the registry office for ID renewal showed features matching those on the registered face in the old documents, but the final result was questionable, to put it mildly. The desk clerk reported the anomaly to her superiors for further investigation. The comparison to photos of the woman from ten years earlier definitively activated the local police operation, which, after searching the 57-year-old's home, found the mummified body of the elderly woman leaning against the wall in the living room.

The man, a 56-year-old son, is accused of concealing his 85-year-old mother's death for a long time, and keeping her body at his home so he could continue receiving his pension, which included his father's allowance, a doctor who died years ago.

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The German police forces has reached out to the Israel Police's Central Fraud Unit to help investigate a multi-media fraud scheme targeting German citizens that they believe is being operated by Israel.

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The suspects are believed to have set up call centers in Israel, Germany, and other countries, including Georgia, through which German citizens were contacted and persuaded to invest hefty sums in stocks, foreign currencies, and goods. Eventually, the investors discovered that their money had vanished without any deals being concluded.

The fraud made use of fake investment websites and is assessed at tens of millions of euros, with investigators suspecting that it remained in operation for several years.

A raid of the company's offices in Petah Tikva, where the scheme was active and targeted Israelis, resulted in police seizing computers, cellphones, documents, and cash. Prior to the raid, 4 million shekels ($1.24 million) in various bank accounts linked to the case had been frozen.

On Wednesday morning, the investigation was made public. Detectives from the unit arrests 15 Israeli suspects and brought them in for questioning. Of the 15, 11 were released after questioning, while the remaining four were detained and due to appear at the Jerusalem Magistrates Court for a remand hearing.

The current expectation is that Germany will ask Israel to extradite the four suspects to stand trial there. The police plan to ask for a 20-day remand, in part to allow time to arrange the extradition process.

The four suspects are residents of Hoon, Tel Aviv, Tzur Yigal and Givatayim. According to the authorities in Germany, they are members of a criminal organization headed by Israelis, although the organization's two heads – an Israeli father and son – are abroad and have yet to be arrested.

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The two are accused of swindling international companies out of some 15 million euros ($17,530,650).

The suspects' extradition was the result of a year-and-a-half-long investigation by the Tel Aviv District Police's Fraud Unit, in coordination with Norwegian authorities.

The suspects allegedly posed as CEOs of international companies and withdrew funds from bank accounts they had demanded to transfer money to.

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The Haredi community in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem was rocked by scandal on Sunday after local residents discovered that a prominent Haredi family were actually Christian missionaries, the Haredi news site Bahadrei Hadarim reported.

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According to the report, the family used forged documents to make aliyah as Jews. Their first home in Israel was in the Nachlaot neighborhood, but after their true identities were revealed they decamped to French Hill in the northern part of the capital.

After moving to French Hill, the family integrated into community life. The father identified himself as a Cohen and a scribe, producing tefillin and mezuzah scrolls, and even conducted marriage ceremonies. The family's children were enrolled in local Haredi schools. The mother died recently after a long illness, and the community collected charity for the mourning family, embracing them as immigrants in Israel without any extended family.

But then active members of the community discovered that the family were not Haredi Jews, or Jewish at all – they were Christian missionaries. According to Bahadrei Hadarim, the father admitted that he had come to Israel to infiltrate the community and spread his Christian faith. At first, the development was kept secret so that the family could not move away before steps were taken to revoke their citizenship.

However, on Sunday morning, the father began to cover his tracks and his daughters did not arrive at school. He also reportedly began to take down his original Facebook profile, which had reportedly been labeled "A Jew in every sense."

"We decided to tell the neighborhood about it so that the residents would know the real story and he wouldn't escape to another neighborhood," one of the community members who discovered the story told the site.

Another community member involved in the affairs told the news site that the mother, before she died, had said that she was the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, but "it turned out that she was the daughter of a Christian couple, and there are even certificates of her parents' baptism."

"Luckily, we just discovered the fraud, so we froze all the charity money collected to support the family. We're in complete shock," he said.

The Jewish outreach organization Yad L'Achim issued a statement in response to the report, explaining that the group had been handing the family's case "for years," and arguing that making the affair public harmed the battle against missionary activity and its "behind-the-scenes work in this case and against other cases of missionaries masquerading [as Jews].

"Six years ago, the resident in question confirmed to us that he was in touch with missionaries in order to preach, and promised that he had changed his ways, but we are now reviewing material that raise serious questions in the matter. When the process is complete, we will make our conclusions public to the relevant authorities," the organization said.

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Who of us has not heard or even experienced the following email scams: a Nigerian prince wants to transfer large sums of money into your account, or a childless millionaire on her deathbed wishes to bequeath her fortune to you, or a widowed doctor is volunteering in Africa looking for true love and says you might be the one.

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In 2021, most people are not fooled by such scams. These emails, and sometimes Facebook messages, are suspicious the moment you read them, especially since they contain lots of grammar mistakes.

Nevertheless, despite the relatively high awareness of the issue in society, some do still fall prey to such fraud. These are primarily elderly, mentally ill, or financially challenged individuals.

Phishing, as such fraud is called, is common in every country, especially in English-speaking ones. Dozens of offices in India pretend to be call centers for Microsoft or Google and manage to rip off innocent customers.

One scenario involves a warning on an internet user's screen, something along the lines of "Your computer has been infected by a virus, call technical support immediately."

When the victim of the scam is the one who initiates the phone call, he is much more likely to believe that he is contacting a legitimate center.

The scammer will then ask the customer to download a program that will enable him to take over the computer "to fix the problem." The user, who thinks his computer has been infected with a virus, is asked to pay an exorbitant amount for the antivirus program, which will not be installed on his computer.

Sometimes, scammers claim the company is closing down, and they would like to refund the user for a payment he made in the past. For this, they connect to the victim's computer, ask to fill out a special form, and type in the amount of money to be transferred.

The scammers add a 0 at the end of the sun, and when the customer sees that he "mistakenly" arranged for a higher refund, the scammers ask to return the money by a gift card or money transfer.

In 2019, when the Facebook data leak happened, the information of more than half a billion users became available online. Full names, phone numbers, emails, dates of birth, you name it. Scammers jumped at the opportunity to use this wealth of personal information.

How to prevent such frauds from happening? The simple answer is: there is no real way to avoid such email scams except speak to your grandparents and explain to them that if they receive a message of this kind, they should not engage.

Some people have taken it upon themselves to eradicate the phone and internet scams and, to this end, created special YouTube channels. Israel Hayom spoke to three such YouTubers to find out their methods in fighting that which appears to be undefeatable. 

Jim Browning's channel, which has 3.1 million subscribers, deals with exposing frauds like impersonating a company worker or a customer service representative in India. He aims to get these offices closed down and has succeeded several times already, when thanks to his work, the Indian police, which previously received countless complaints, but did nothing to stop the fraud, was finally under pressure to act.

Browning's videos include phone calls with scammers during which he pretends to be an innocent customer, and shows how he gets access to the scammer's phones, deletes data on their computers, and downloads lists of potential "customers," whom he later warns.

Sometimes he can save the victim in the middle of the fraud by calling the user while he is on the phone with the scammer. Surprisingly, most of the time, victims do not believe that they are being scammed. In fact, often, they think Browning is the scammer.

"These fraudsters manage to persuade the victims to part with their money because it is someone who seems trustworthy, so when I called them up saying, 'hey, you are being scammed,' they get suspicious," Browning explained.

Browning, which is an alias, lives somewhere in Europe. He is a computer and software engineer and has always been fascinated with internet fraud.

"I would call it 'professional curiosity.' I've always wanted to know how these scams work, how they are built, how to find the weakness in them, and repay the scammer what he deserves."

Browning's YouTube channel began by accident.

"I wanted to show one of the scammer's internet provider what he had done. I recorded it, uploaded the video to YouTube, and sent him [the provider] the link to have it [the scammer's internet] blocked, and people discovered the video and watched it. I never intended to become a well-known and popular YouTuber."

Dutch YouTuber, Deeveeaar, who has 136,000 subscribers, works with fraud exposers worldwide without knowing their real names or exact locations.

"Not only do we waste their [the scammers'] time, but we also cause them millions of dollars in damage," he said. "We hack into their websites, take over their computers and cause calls to overflow.

Another YouTube channel, ScamBait Central, with more than 39,000 subscribers, is run by a Londoner who calls himself Mr. Pricky. He is a veteran in the field and mainly deals with West African scams.

He does most of his work through Facebook live, during which he exposes scammers. Often Mr. Pricky tries to trick the scammer himself.

"I spoke to someone who "sells gold" in Ghana once a week for a year. It was a large sum of 234,000 pounds ($326,000). After several failed attempts, he agreed to send a colleague to the UK to collect the money. When he arrived at the meeting point in London, I photographed him standing and waiting for the money that never arrived."

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According to the Israeli business website CTECH, the lawsuit accuses the above companies of intentionally misleading regulators about "a fraudulent software meant to falsify diesel engine emissions readings" to persuade Israel that the cars met the country's environmental standards.

The state prosecution asserted that the vehicles would not have been allowed into the country if the real data had been provided.

The scandal surrounding the software was revealed in 2015.

Investigations and legal action have been taken in a number of countries, including the United States, Germany, Spain, and Australia.

Champion Motors says that Israel imported 12,000 such cars between 2008 and 2016, but has denied commenting on the lawsuit.

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Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Zoabi is suspected of fraud, aggravated forgery, using forged documents, falsifying corporate documents, attempts to receive illicit benefits and money laundering pertaining to donations amounting to millions of shekels during the 2013 Knesset and municipal election campaigns.

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The case includes suspicions of misrepresentations of the source of funds that Balad received in 2013, which were allegedly presented to the State Comptroller's Office as donations from hundreds of private citizens.

The State Comptroller's Office routinely audits all political parties to ensure that no violations of campaign financing laws take place.

Police suspect that during 2013 the party received some NIS 3.2 million ($920,000) from sources that have yet to be ascertained and fraudulently declared the funds as private donations using over 1,300 forged documents.

Zoabi is the prime suspect in the case, while 35 other Balad officials, including former director general Awad Hussein, the party's legal counsel Riyad Mahamid, and central committee members Murad Hadad and Azaldin, are suspected of fraud and lighter criminal offenses.

According to a Justice Ministry statement, Zoabi and other Balad officials perpetrated a "systematic and meticulously planned act of fraud."

A statement by Balad said: "We adamantly reject the accusations against the party, against former MK Hanin Zoabi, and against other party members for the so-called 2013 election affair. The investigation into the matter ended three years ago. The State Prosecutor's Office waited all this time only to announce its decisions on the eve of the elections, so as to damage Balad, the Joint Arab List, and Arab voters."

The party further added that the case "is an administrative matter that is under the purview of the state comptroller, which is how similar issues found among other parties have been handled. Making this into a criminal matter is a vindictive step indicative of political persecution, as clearly indicated by the timing of this announcement."

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The two-day delay stirred speculation that she might renege on the deal and continue with the trial, but now that she has signed the deal, a revised indictment will be filed.

If the court approves the deal, Netanyahu will pay the state 45,000 shekels ($12,000) in reimbursement and a 10,000-shekel ($2,800) fine while admitting a lesser charge.

According to the original indictment, Sara Netanyahu, along with a government employee, fraudulently obtained from the state hundreds of meals supplied by restaurants, with a total value of some $100,000, bypassing regulations that prohibit the practice if a cook is employed at home.

Prosecutors said Netanyahu abused an administrative error that allowed her to obtain the meals without charge, essentially defrauding the state in collusion with others.

The deal was reached in a six-month-long mediation process and will go into effect after it is ratified by a judge.

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