Four Charged in Telegram Extortion Scheme Targeting Men

State prosecutors on Monday filed an indictment in the Tel Aviv District Court against four defendants accused of running a sophisticated extortion operation that used fake social media identities to lure men into meetings, threaten them, and force them to pay. The defendants are Zohar Dvir, 28, of Eilat, Eitan Hassel, 20, of Ganei Tikva, Itamar Hanuna, 47, of Acre, and Lior Haken, 22, of Or Yehuda.

According to the indictment, submitted by attorney Oren Haim of the Tel Aviv District Prosecutor’s Office, the group created fictitious Telegram profiles posing as married women and as a 17-year-old girl. After contacting victims and arranging meetings, the defendants allegedly arrived at the scene and at times presented themselves as police officers, the girl’s brother, or the husband of the woman the victims had been speaking with.

Prosecutors say they then threatened the men, assaulted some of them, and demanded money while warning that private recordings and images would be published on social media and shared with relatives and acquaintances. In some cases, the indictment says, they carried out the threats by opening WhatsApp groups that included victims’ family members and friends and posting the material alongside false claims meant to humiliate them.

The indictment also alleges that some defendants took victims’ phones, accessed them, reviewed bank accounts and contact lists, and used that information to continue the blackmail. Prosecutors say the scheme brought in more than 550,000 shekels, while additional attempts were made to extract hundreds of thousands more. The four face charges including extortion by force, extortion by threats, unauthorized access to computer material, and privacy offenses, and prosecutors also asked to keep them in custody until the end of proceedings.