From the major criminal organizations to 12-year-old children: the fight against Israeli cybercrimes

Many criminals take advantage of the crypto world to cover their tracks and transfer hundreds of millions of shekels, while on the way they push ordinary citizens into the world of crime.

On the other side of the screen is Lahav 433's cyber unit, which depicts a war that looks like science fiction.

"Like a high-tech office full of criminals"

Shlomi Heller

09/24/2022

Saturday, September 24, 2022, 11:30 a.m. Updated: 11:43 a.m.

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On video: Documenting the arrest at an advertising agency in the north of suspects in defrauding investors (Photo: Israel Police Spokesperson)

The world is developing, technology is changing every day, and the criminal organizations are also advancing with it.

The main engine of crime is money, and if in the past it was easier to trace it, today many criminal organizations make sure to conduct themselves in digital currencies, which makes the fight against them much more complex.

Hundreds of millions of shekels are poured into the crypto market to trick the authorities, and the one who stands in the face of this flow is the cyber unit in Lahab 433, which deals with preventing and thwarting crime in a space that is being upgraded every day and becoming the arena of the future of the world of banking and the global economy.

"This is a new world that has grown very quickly, which has all the inherent advantages of a criminal," explains the commander of the unit, Deputy Superintendent Dodi Katz, in a special interview with Walla.

"Let's say, the same criminal has a digital wallet that has no name behind it, and he can disguise his identity and transfer to it the funds he wishes to hide. There is a game of cat and mouse between us and the criminals when we target a certain type of wallet and start enforcing it and then they decide to switch to a different type of wallet. The point is that unlike a bank account, behind which you can always find the person at the end, in digital wallets you don't have to identify yourself."

"In most crimes in our world, what needs to be done is to break the veil of anonymity," says Katz.

"The interface between crypto and the world of crime occurs in several ways - its use as a platform for money laundering, the ground that trade in it creates for attacking victims and the fact that the payment for the consumption of criminal services is through crypto."

"A world with all the advantages for a criminal".

Deputy Superintendent Dodi Katz (Photo: Israel Police Spokesperson)

According to Katz, another reason for the influx of Israeli criminals to the crypto market is the speed and accessibility of transferring funds from account to account, "You can transfer millions of shekels from account to account with three clicks of the mouse without raising questions and without anyone knowing," explains Katz.

"If the head of a criminal organization wants to finance a certain criminal activity or transfer money derived from crime to a third country, he makes this transfer from a wallet to a wallet in a 'third country', and then he legally returns the money to his accounts, thus cutting off the connection between them and their source - world the crime".

Another advantage in the crypto world is the ability to move around the world freely and convert the digital currencies into cash.

"In this world there are no borders. If I have a crypto wallet in my pocket, let's say on a disk on key, I can go to an exchange anywhere in the world and perform a conversion in front of it, as a type of withdrawal, of any money I need," says Katz.

"Another layer in the field of exchanges, most of which actually requires a certain registration, is the underground market. A person who wants to convert crypto to real money, coordinates the conversion with anonymous exchangers through Telegram groups, coordinates a meeting with them in the middle of the street and performs the conversion. Here there is already A matter that should interest the state, not just the police, because there is an aspect of tax, VAT and all the things we pay through the bank - and this is money laundering for everything."

This bartering method also keeps the police busy because it can lead to robberies.

For example, several cases were solved involving a group of criminals who offered convenient commissions on Telegram, and in practice sold fictitious currencies or robbed those who wanted to make the conversion after they received the money.

To deal with this phenomenon, the police planted intelligence coordinators in the relevant groups.

"This is the opportunity to warn citizens who want to make a crypto transaction, to check with whom they are making the transaction, because they can be stung with thousands of dollars and it could be hundreds of thousands of shekels," says Katz.

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Hundreds of thousands of shekels in Bitcoin (Photo: ShutterStock)

In order to integrate into the world, the criminal organizations recruit people who are knowledgeable in the field and who grew up in normative frameworks, where they recognized the potential of the world.

"We see many criminal organizations that have copied their economic activity to the world of crypto, and those who actually operate it are not hardcore criminals," says the commander of the cyber unit, "these are people who think they are committing white collar crimes. But a person who launders money for a criminal organization that extorts, threatens And a murderer - he is a full partner in their activities."

The cyber division of the police, which operates under the investigation and intelligence division in Lahab 433, operates through four arms, among others an intelligence division, a technology division, and another division that is responsible for analyzing the data collected in the division.

Among the dozens of police officers active in the brigade are also veterans of 8200 and other young people who enlisted as part of national service.

One of them, 21-year-old A, who is responsible, among other things, for analyzing the data, is a young man on the autistic continuum who has been serving in the division for more than two years and is among the most valued in the division.

In the past year and a half, the division dealt with, among other things, the activities of terrorist organizations such as Hamas, the hacker attack on the Hillel Yaffe hospital, the spread of messages to a drug dealer with a national distribution, as well as extortion and crime cases of organizations in Arab society that operated in cyberspace.

A significant case that was recently solved in the cyber unit led to the arrest of the criminal Yossi Mosley, who, according to the indictment against him, threatened two business people from the crypto world and tried to recruit them for the benefit of his criminal activities.

"In quite a few cases, those on the other side were 12-year-old children" (Photo: ShutterStock)

Another case solved in the unit recently was the arrest of a programmer, a former officer in a military technology unit, who was behind the distribution of messages for the sale of drugs.

"You see that some of your opponents are not classic criminals, they could easily fit into a high-tech company and remain normal people. One of the reasons for this is that in these worlds you don't see the victim in the eyes and it's more tempting to cross the lines," Katz clarifies.

According to him, "The company we are dealing with are professionals, at a very high level, we are talking about a generation that can sit at home for three months in front of YouTube and learn it. We are not in a world where a person has to go through a course of 8200, etc. In quite a few cases, those on the other side were 12-year-old children who committed cyber crimes, and this is not an easy event."

Parallel to the ongoing business activity of criminals using crypto, there are Israeli criminal organizations whose businesses flourish mainly from crypto scams.

"We see how the criminal organizations work to sting investors who are outside of Israel, mainly from countries that do not have diplomatic, police or legal relations with us, and the ability to investigate this is quite limited. The infrastructure is also quite decentralized. The criminal is based in Israel, but the computer infrastructure is on the other side of the world."

For example, according to the senior police officer, at the beginning of the year the police dealt with a case involving thousands of victims from Western Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region, which are not part of the "Abraham Accords".

During the course of the investigation, significant evidence was collected against the suspects.

"But when you get to the place where the criminals were operating, somewhere in the north, you discover an innocent high-tech office, where there are telephones, a bar for lunch and a creativity room where you can sit and develop your thoughts.", says Katz.

"An office that does not embarrass any hi-tech company in Israel, but its lifespan is criminal from end to end.

"This arena is like science fiction."

National Cyber ​​Unit (Photo: Israel Police Spokesperson)

However, the use of crypto also has a downside, which is the Achilles heel of the criminal world.

The use of crypto is indeed anonymous, but the technology works so that the activity itself is visible, because the blockchain is based on trust between users.

This allows the unit to analyze the information at a very high level.

On top of that, part of the trading between the wallets is conducted in the exchanges, which summarize the movements in them every day, which makes it possible to follow what is happening in them.

"Unlike in past years, in most cases against criminal organizations you don't see bank accounts but digital wallets. When we arrive at the scene, we need to immediately identify the wallets of the targets and already instead transfer the money to the police wallet. It's not enough to get the address of the wallet, we need the access to it," says Katz.

Associate Professor Shamrit Reis, head of the cryptographic network intelligence department, explains: "It's a very dynamic world and you sometimes don't know where you're going, because the arena is virtual and the volatility of money is very high.

When you want to transfer a million shekels from your account in Israel to abroad, you will receive a call from the Israeli bank and abroad they will ask questions, and such an operation will take several weeks, but a transfer of this magnitude in the world of crypto will be carried out in a few minutes, and criminals can move money from place to place within "

We had an investigation where we arrived at the scene, made an arrest, and found most of the suspects' wallets, but we were not able to access all the wallets we found at the scene," she says. "While we were at the scene, someone from the criminal organization who was not caught withdrew the funds, amounting to Millions of shekels, and before our eyes the wallets were emptied.

this is very frustrating.

The sums of money usually kept by criminals and criminal organizations in their wallets can contain hundreds of thousands of shekels and up to tens of millions."

Sen. Katz concludes: "This arena is like science fiction, you pick up very fast and very technological arrays to realize a crypto arena, we have excellent cooperation with other police forces in the world.

We have interfaces with cyber all over the world, and the knowledge has to be collaborative, because it's a very advanced world.

More and more traditional crime is moving to the online worlds, including cyber crimes, and we are constantly intensifying."

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