Indictment against the 'Masmidim': Fraud and Money Laundering

Jerusalem District Attorney by Attorney Rebecca Alkobi, filed today (Monday) an indictment in Jerusalem District Court against 11 defendants, some are members of one family. Indictment includes charges of organizations fraud, fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice and harassment of witnesses. Defendants are members of the 'Masmidim' community.

The defendants are all residents of Jerusalem and Beitar Illit and are amongst 'Masmidim' community leaders.

As described in the indictment, during the relevant period defendants committed many and varied operations, in order to defraud the state and its institutions, and to fraudulently receive money. The defendants committed the above by submitting applications to support many religious institutions belonging to the 'Masmidim' community, which included false information and various misrepresentations. The filed false applications were falsely named, which are supposedly controlled by different people, and are from different places. It was actually all organizations operated by the defendants, and was solely in their control.

According to the indictment, the defendants carried out many operations, including management and use of illegal organizations, using straw men, false support request submissions, creating misrepresentations and fraud, in order to defraud the state and its institutions and to fraudulently receive money.

It also shows that the defendants also "bought" the management rights of the old associations by others and unlawfully, in order to promote an act of deception.
The defendants falsified the framework of approximately 1650 counterfeit identity cards and tried to forge hundreds of other IDs.

Fraudulent applications included false information about the activities of Associations: The defendants presented false representations to the Ministry of Education about the amount of students in the organizations institutions, the amount of which they increased by using the details of the actual non-students associations to which the application relates.

Due to acts of fraud, the defendants received fraudulent financial subsidies at the bank accounts of various organizations transferred by the Ministry of Education to the organizations. The total financial fraud that the Education Ministry gave the accused during the relevant period is over 48 million shekel.

According to the indictment, whilst committing the offenses described above, and the one after, the accused performed many activities that are designed to hide, conceal and obscure the source of the prohibited property, the form of use, the identity of users, the location, and movements, and thus laundered these funds.

After police began investigating the case of defendants, some defendants worked to disrupt the course of justice, violating a legal order and harassing a witness.
The indictment is being published in parallel with another episode released this morning, during which investigators raided the Fraud Division of the Israel Police, in cooperation with IRS Jerusalem investigators - the homes of three members of a fictitious organization called Bnos Yerushalayim – Keren Moshe.

It is suspected that the association sought the support of the Ministry of Education for an anti - Zionist educational institution 'Bnos Yerushalayim' - that never asked for government support. The extent of the fraud, it is believed, is estimated at tens of millions of shekels in recent years.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!