The Haifa District Court on Monday sentenced 28-year-old Dimitri Cohen of Haifa to 8.5 years in prison for maintaining contact with a foreign agent and seven additional counts of attempted transfer of information that could help the enemy. The case was handled by Israel Security Agency, the Coastal District, and the Haifa prosecution, and the sentence is counted from his arrest on May 27, 2025, plus three years suspended.
According to the indictment, Cohen looked for work online in spring 2025 and was contacted by a man calling himself “David,” who offered him 500 dollars per task and paid in cryptocurrency. “David” claimed to run a private investigations firm called Jupiter, specializing in infidelity cases, but was in fact a foreign operative. Cohen was told to buy an operational phone and SIM card, then carried out surveillance work beginning in Tirat Carmel.
He was initially asked to photograph private homes, the Baha’i Gardens, and Haifa Bay. Later, he was directed to film major roads across Israel, including the Coastal Highway, Route 4, the road from Beersheba to Mitzpe Ramon, the route from Kibbutz Samar to Eilat, Eilat Port, ships in Eilat Bay, and also the Hadera power station. The court said he did not only film road edges, but also directional signs, power lines, infrastructure, and other sensitive sites.
Cohen erased some footage after realizing some material could have security value, including clips of military bases and sensitive installations. Still, the judges, Arz Porat, Nitzan Silman, and Rebekah Izenberg, ruled that he had suspected from the start that the contact was linked to Iran, and increasingly so as the missions became more security-related. They said he “closed his eyes” to many warning signs, including foreign phone numbers, unusual payments, and warnings from friends and his partner. The court also noted the war with Iran and its proxies, and said the sentence reflects the need for tougher penalties as Israeli civilians are recruited through social media and Telegram. The judges took into account that Cohen had no prior criminal record, expressed remorse, acted for money rather than ideology, and refused one further assignment near Eilat Port after understanding its seriousness.
