Associated Press
Jerusalem, June 8: Israel’s state prosecutor indicted four new immigrants from France Wednesday for allegedly running a major international scam costing five European companies about 9.1 million euros, or over $10 million. The companies that lost money are MediaMarkt, Eldi, Cora, ICI Paris XL and Intergamma, according to the indictment. Other companies entangled in the case include Electrolux, Bosch, Chanel, Kia Motors, and Toyota, though some companies did not fall for the trick, according to the indictment. Israeli prosecution says the immigrants collected information on European companies, including names of company employees and details on money the companies owed to vendors.
Then, according to prosecutors, they used fake email accounts to send forged documents to a company’s employee in charge of finances, presenting themselves as CEOs or representatives of a vendor owed money, and requesting the funds be sent to a different bank account, one under their control. The case suggests that the so-called fake CEO scam is still thriving in Israel, where the man widely credited with pioneering the technique, Gilbert Chikli, continues to live openly in Israel, evading French attempts to arrest him. Chikli is not suspected in the current case.
The French-born defendants were identified as Henri Omessi, Daniel Allon, Jeremy Lalloum and Mordechai Lellouche. They were appearing at a court hearing Wednesday, and it was not immediately known how they would plead. In one scam, according to Wednesday’s indictment, defendants impersonated executives of Belgium electronics company Eldi and German electronics giant Bosch, tricking an Eldi employee to transfer 794,175.70 euros owed to Bosch to the defendants’ bank account.
