In the video: The laboratories and the photograph of the notes in which the hashid called the laboratories names and wrote instructions on them (Israel Police Spokesperson's Office)
An indictment was filed today (Monday) against five men from the Krayot for operating an industrial production system of 13 "hydro apartments" rented for the purpose of growing cannabis. The five were previously arrested on suspicion of murdering 31-year-old criminal Vladik Elizarov, where their mobile phones were taken from them, which contained evidence of the illegal business they run.
According to the indictment, all the apartments in which the defendants grew cannabis are located in one neighborhood in Kiryat Yam D. "These apartments were rented for one purpose," said a senior official in the Coast District Central Unit. They chose cheap apartments in housing buildings where a weak population lived, which also did not pay much attention to the happenings around it. Sometimes they operated two apartments in the same building," he added. "The value of the electricity they stole, according to the charges, while making connections by bypass to the electricity meters, is estimated at half a million to a million shekels," he claimed.
The five, Avraham Khodatov, 38, Shlomo Shomashonov, 40, Yitzhak Ben Zazon, 35, Radik and Rafailov, 26, who live in Kiryat Yam, as well as 31-year-old Bliss Ferdinando from Kiryat Motzkin, the only one with no criminal record, are charged with multiple offenses of manufacturing, preparing and producing the drug, possession of the tools used to prepare it, possession of commercial quantities, and theft of electricity for the operation of the laboratories. The "managers", Khodatov, Shomashonov and Ben Zazon, are also charged with multiple offenses of receiving fraudulently under aggravated circumstances, impersonation and using a forged document.
Information gathered by the defendants about the apartments where they grew cannabis (Photo: official website, investigation file)
The murder of Vladik Elizarov, who was also known in the field of drugs, occurred at the beginning of last February on Etzel Street in Kiryat Yam. Hof District Commander Major General Yoram Sofer assigned the investigation to his central unit, where it was entrusted to the deputy commander of the Homicide Division, Superintendent Efi Friedman. It was conducted covertly, and only became public two and a half months later with the arrest of the suspects.
The murder investigation hit a dead end, but during the investigation they gained access to one of the mobile phones seized from Ben Zazon, which police suspect was the business' operations manager. Among its contents was a detailed list, written, inter alia, in criminal codes of apartment management, meticulous agricultural instructions for handling household crops, and daily correspondence regarding the maintenance of apartments and crops. According to the charges, Rafailov and Ferdinando were "employees of the business" who followed instructions and gave reports, and Ben Zazon was the one who rented the apartments, identifying himself as Dan Diachuk, a 27-year-old drug offender from Haifa, from whom his identity was stolen. He presented an ID card in Dyachuk's name with Ben Zazon's picture implanted, and handed homeowners withdrawn checks from Dan Dyachuk's account or bank accounts of a company owned by Dyachuk.
"Growing a large amount, in all its stages, in a planned, systematic manner, which ostensibly indicates 'industrial production,'" the Haifa District Attorney's Office argued against the five. She also noted that Tzachi Ben-Zazon "acted together with others in the production and production of drugs as a business in every respect, while committing fraudulent offenses designed to disguise their activities and obscure their identity and traces of fraud."
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These are complex cases with about 186 witnesses that the prosecution is prepared to put on the stand to prove their guilt. Concurrently with the filing of the indictment, prosecutors Attorney Muna Mansour and Attorney Shoval Chen of the Haifa District Attorney's Office sought to declare the defendants "drug dealers," confiscate seized property from them, and extend the detention of the five until the end of the legal proceedings against them. A hearing on the merits of these requests is expected to take place later, and in the meantime, at a hearing held by Judge Nitzan Silman in Ben-Zazon's case and a separate hearing held in the case of the other four, and with the consent of defense attorneys Doron Noy and Yali Sperling and Yaad Naveh, who represent them, their detention was extended until another decision.
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