Video: Last residents evacuated from Sderot/Yanir Yagna
A 38-year-old Tel Aviv resident was detained yesterday (Sunday) for questioning at the city's Sharat police station on suspicion of taking advantage of the war, posing as an evacuee from the south and fraudulently receiving an apartment in Tel Aviv. According to the complaint filed by Yael, the owner of the apartment, the suspect added insult to injury - caused extensive damage to the apartment and stole property from it. "The scenes were shocking," she said.
"I returned to Israel a few days ago to a ruined, filthy house, with broken things and a lot of things missing," she returned to Walla! Yael, "He took away things like cutlery, a robotic vacuum cleaner and souvenirs I brought from Africa. Three people had to clean the apartment for 12 hours. He even made holes in the walls where I could see the neighbors on the other side of the wall."
When the war broke out, Yael, who was abroad at the time, saw an advertisement for an association looking for a housing solution for the evacuees of the south and wanted to help – she approached them in order to volunteer her apartment. Thus, the suspect entered the apartment and lived there for about three months.
The damage caused by a Tel Aviv resident to an apartment he received in Marmara after presenting himself as an evacuee/Israel Police Spokesperson's Office
The damage caused by a Tel Aviv resident to an apartment he received in Marmara after presenting himself as an evacuee/Israel Police Spokesperson's Office
At some point, various signs that emerged made Yael suspect that he was an impostor. "My neighbors started to worry about it but didn't want to worry me when I was abroad," she said. "They said there was a noise and they felt a strange sensation from it. One of the neighbors told me that he had heard that the man was from Yeruham, but he told me that he was actually from Bari."
"I had a feeling that maybe I needed to do something, but I was afraid that the harm I might do to a person who had just been traumatized was worse for me than the fact that maybe he wasn't exactly a normal person or a crook," Yael added, "He literally sent me all the right messages and gave me the feeling that he was taking care of the house and that everything was good and that they really needed it."
However, this week after returning home, the owner of the apartment discovered many damages, including an antique piece of furniture that had been partially burned down and a lot of property stolen from the apartment, estimated to be worth about ten thousand shekels - such as electrical appliances, collectibles from Africa and more. A relative of yours, Yael, suggested that she check whether the man had indeed been evacuated from Kibbutz Be'eri, as he had said.
"I told her that it scared me that he would reach his ears, that I had even dared to check it out – it wasn't pleasant for me. In the end, she made the inquiry and people told her he wasn't from Bari. But we discovered that there was a person living in Bari with the name he introduced himself."
The damage caused by a Tel Aviv resident to an apartment he received in Marmara after presenting himself as an evacuee/Israel Police Spokesperson's Office
The damage caused by a Tel Aviv resident to an apartment he received in Marmara after presenting himself as an evacuee/Israel Police Spokesperson's Office
"Beyond the material damage and the personal things that disappeared from the apartment, there is this feeling that they really penetrated and belittled my most personal things," she added. "But what's stronger is the damage to the country. How can a person be in such a situation in the first two weeks after October 7? How do you think this is the right time to take advantage?" wondered Yael.
Although she was hurt by the scam, Yael refuses to lose faith in future aid seekers. "A lot of people are telling me now that I won't give away my apartment anymore and that I've learned my lesson, but I said I will give my apartment because I want the world to run this way and for crooks and others not to dictate the world we live in."
Yesterday, as stated, the suspect was interrogated at the Sharat police station and later released under restrictive conditions of house arrest. The police said that "the station's investigators will return the suspected stolen property to the complainant today and will continue the investigation until the suspect is brought to justice."
Just last week, the police arrested three suspects who posed as families of abductees and scammed donations of about NIS 100,30. It is suspected that the three posed as several different people from the families of the abductees and evacuees, using their photos from a social network, and contacted the public through messaging software and asked for donations in cash only. The main suspect was arrested at Ben Gurion Airport when he tried to leave the country, and two others in their <>s were arrested in their homes in the north.
- More on the subject:
- Iron Sword War
- Gaza War
- Evacuees
- Tel Aviv-Yafo