Charge: Palestinian impersonated Israel Post and swindled 200,000 shekels

January 3, 2022   

The Cyber ​​Department at the State Attorney's Office filed an indictment with the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court today (Monday) against Muhammad Abbasi, a 21-year-old resident of the Palestinian Authority, who sent tens of thousands of phishing messages, impersonating Israel Post, and raked in a profit of over 200,000 shekels. Did you divide? For thousands of years we dreamed of Jerusalem, so now we want to dirty it? On Saturday: The mother rested, the child pulled the trigger – and was hospitalized in serious condition Are you crazy? Is your child unprotected? One in every 150 children who contracted the virus was hospitalized The indictment charges him with, among other things, the offenses of receiving something by fraud under aggravated circumstances, transmitting false information on a computer, and intruding into computer material in order to commit another offense. According to the facts of the indictment, starting last September, the defendant planned and carried out a large-scale phishing scam, by distributing false messages to thousands of Israeli citizens and attempting to send tens of thousands of additional false messages. As part of the messages, which were assumed to be from Israel Post, Abbasi misrepresented to those citizens that the package they ordered arrived in Israel via Israel Post, but it was detained at customs and that they must pay an amount of approximately 297 shekels in order to release it, or a daily fee would be added to the payment amount. After the recipients of the messages made the payment, the payment was transferred to one of three digital currency wallets that were under Abbasi's control. As part of the described phishing scheme, Abbasi illegally hacked into an Israeli company's server, without the knowledge and consent of the company's owners, in order to store on the company's server the website impersonating Israel Post, to which the false SMS messages he sent led. In addition, in order to create a false representation to the recipients of the messages regarding the nature of the impersonating landing pages, Abbasi obtained control of domain names (domains) that falsely impersonated official Israel Post websites, and included, among other things, the words: Post Israel, Doar Israel and Post IL. In this way, Abbasi, as mentioned, earned a financial profit of over 200,000 shekels and tried to earn a higher amount. About two weeks ago, the suspect was arrested by Lahav 433. At the same time as the indictment was filed, the prosecution requested Abbasi's detention until the end of the legal proceedings against him. The prosecution emphasized, in the framework of the arrest request, the systematicity, sophistication and extensive scope of the victims, and the potential victims as a result of his activities. The prosecution also noted the fact that the offenses were committed via the Internet, and therefore it is not possible to ensure the objectives of the arrest by means of an alternative to detention.