prostitution (photo credit: Reuters)
Three young men from Beit She’an are suspected of impersonating women and extorting more than NIS 100,000 from people online.
Police are investigating an online network of menposing as underage girls looking to engage in sex work to blackmail and extort would-be clients out of significant amounts of money, Maariv learned.
The network has extorted funds from both minor and adult victims while committing serious offenses of impersonation, presenting fictitious profiles, fraud, deceit, and extortion.
The men, sometimes from religious communities, were blackmailed into releasing funds to the network out of fear they would be arrested or have the information leaked publicly.
One of these serious cases was revealed in recent days and culminated in a prosecutor’s statement submitted by Jerusalem District Police investigators.
The month-long undercover investigation, centered on three young residents of Beit She’an, including a soldier, found a social network that managed to extort more than NIS 100,000 from victims throughout the country, and mainly from the central region.
A prostitute waits for customers along a road. (credit: REUTERS)
The extortion scheme is thought to have lasted for over a year.
A senior source involved in the details of the investigation shared with Maariv what happened in the crime ring.
“There is a group of three young men. One of them is involved in very few cases, let’s say something between five and seven cases,” the source said, adding, “About a month and a half ago, a complainant from the Jerusalem area came to the police and told the investigators how he fell into the network and was subjected to blackmail attempts. We began investigating the issue and traced quite a few victims as well as an incident from late 2024, so it is clear to us that this is not a new story.”
The sextortion ring’s methods
“All the victims are of varying ages, from the 30s to the 50s and 60s,” the source disclosed. “There’s a dating site they operated on; it’s a very anonymous site. On this site, for that matter, a girl posts a message in which she states her age, and the title is ‘Supported by cash’ or ‘Needs cash… Users of the site send a response or offer themselves, and people fall for it. People are looking… they want sex, a hookup.”
He added: “On this site, there are also requests for all sorts of other things, other sexual encounters, both gays, lesbians, transgenders, and all sorts. In some cases, they go to Telegram; in some cases, they don’t. Those young people are actually the ones behind the message, and in reality there is no real girl.”
“They basically send ads as if it’s a real girl, and after someone starts having some kind of conversation, then they find out some initial details, who the person is, where they’re from, or how old they are, and things like that. One of the suspects starts writing that she’s 16 or 16.5 years old, offers a sexual act for 200 shekels, and usually that’s something that leads to some people also starting to flow a little.
“Sometimes there are those who say, ‘Okay, I didn’t know you were a minor, thank you very much for the introduction,’ and disconnect. But there are those who say, ‘So if that’s the goal, then just send me a picture,’ and there are those who say, ‘Okay, where are you?’ In any case, it never reached the point of an actual meeting.”
“At a certain point, the conversation disconnects. Usually there are no pictures of that 16-year-old girl, there may be one or two cases where a picture was sent, but usually there are no pictures sent, there is no direct conversation between a woman and a man. This is usually what happens in all cases.
“One of the suspects calls and introduces himself…In some cases it’s on WhatsApp, in most cases it’s via a regular, identified phone. He presents himself as a representative of an organization or association that helps girls who have been harmed by an act of prostitution. He wants money to rehabilitate those girls, he says, ‘We belong to an association that fights pedophiles.’
“The public must understand that, in general, pedophilia is only under the age of 16 and not over the age of 16. Over the age of 16 it’s something else – it’s an attempt to have prostitution with a minor, which is also a crime in itself. Then he says, ‘We want to help those poor girls, who need rehabilitation, [and] you’re being filmed,’ and then comes the blackmail. ‘You’re very welcome, give us a symbolic amount and we’ll close the case for you.’ “It could be 3,000 shekels, it could also be 18,000 or 35,000 shekels, depending on their assessment of how much they can extort from it.”
The source added that many of those who paid the extortion are from the religious community, and fear being exposed to their families if they don’t pay the amount.
“They threaten them that they will turn them over to the police and publish them in the media, and the whole world will see what is happening to them,” the source explained. “And their whole family will know what bad people they are, and sometimes they manage to locate on social networks where these people are, exactly where they are from, and what they are doing. And those people realize that they have two options: either pay money, hush money, or their world is ruined for them…and then they pay.”
The network would often send a taxi to collect money from the victims, with the man receiving warnings from the drivers to avoid repeating their behaviour.
So far, police have identified 15 victims but anticipate there are more who are reluctant to come forward.