Israel: We Will Not Turn Over the JCC Bomb-Threat Hoaxer to the United States

[Translated from Hebrew using Google Translate]

The Justice Ministry in Israel has informed the US Justice Department of its refusal to allow the hacker to sow panic in the United States and that the hacker, who has already received two serious indictments in the United States, has committed crimes in 10 different countries.

Police: The young man was also blackmailed by an American senator

By Gia Flg and Msh Nosbaom | 23 April 2017

NEWS 2 — After News 2 reported yesterday that the US Justice Department is demanding the extradition of the hacker from Ashkelon and that two indictments have been filed against him in the United States, it turns out on Sunday that Israel has refused to extradite him.

News 2 learned that the Americans had turned to the Israeli Justice Ministry and asked to extradite the young man — but Israel refused. Despite the refusal, there is no rupture between the US and Israeli justice ministries.

The State Attorney’s Office in Israel has made it clear to their American counterparts that the hacker committed crimes in 10 different countries, but he will be tried in Israel. In any case, the Americans have not yet raised a white flag on their demand.

Tomorrow, the State Prosecutor’s Office is expected to file a serious indictment against the 18-year-old hacker, who is suspected of committing hundreds of threatening calls to Jewish institutions around the world. Yesterday, two serious indictments were filed against him in the United States.

The investigation revealed that the hacker from Ashkelon was blackmailing a Republican senator from the Republican Party in the United States. These suspicions will join the indictment that will be filed tomorrow in the Tel Aviv District Court.

According to the police, after a member of the Senate expressed himself in the media against the suspect in the context of the threat talks, the suspect called him and asked him to return him, and not to fine him every 72 hours. If he did not pay, he told him, he would incriminate him with his own methods.

After the senator did not respond to the threats and blackmail, the suspect began to buy drugs on the net and send them in envelopes to the house that had been extorted in an attempt to incriminate him.

Last night, News 2 reported that the details of his interrogation in Israel indicate that the young man allegedly offered his “threat services” for payment. For example, in his account on the network, an amount of close to two million shekels [US$552,669] was found in Bitcoin.

In the framework of the investigation, a student in one of the educational institutions in the United States who was examined on a particular day was examined and asked to reject it and contacted the suspect and paid him via the internet currency. In return, the latter allegedly contacted the applicant’s school, announced a “bomb” – and evacuated the institution and canceled the examination. The State Prosecutor’s Office will now have to decide whether to extradite the young man to the United States, and on Monday an indictment will be filed against him in Israel.

The affair began about three years ago, when an unknown person began calling Jewish institutions around the world, and in his conversations he warned about a bomb that had been buried. On one occasion he even caused emergency landing of El Al and Dalata aircraft.

At the end of a covert investigation involving the Lahav 433 and the FBI, the young man was arrested along with his father and interrogated on suspicion of involvement in the acts. At the time of the arrest, the police confiscated three of the son’s computers and the WiFi antenna he used. His father said he did not suspect his son when he bought the antenna.

After the father was released from detention, he claimed that “the world does not understand” that his son suffers from severe autism. “This child is different, he is unique,” he explained. “It is unique in all dimensions that people have seen.” The father noted that he himself had suffered from medical problems and that his son was also dealing with a medical problem. “I was exposed to thousands of very destructive chemicals,” he said. “I underwent three operations to remove tumors, and my son also has a tumor.” […]