"Recruitment of employees" - see, for example, section 23 of the facts of the amended indictment.
"Customer Training" See, for example, section 21 of the facts of the amended indictment.
"Collection and Funds" See, for example, sections 15, 24 and 25 of the facts of the amended indictment.
- The facts of the amended indictment highlight the sophistication used by the defendants and the methods they used to obscure their identities and actions. Among other things, they used pseudonyms, operated an array of women (hereinafter: "Straw Women"), conversed with them through voice distortion software, and presented themselves as "Nabil" and "Muhammad".
The resulting picture is of cunning and creative defendants who used subterfuge to get what they wanted.
- The great boldness of the defendants highlights the severity of their actions. The defendants, as well as the other conspirators, were not afraid to use social networks and digital media to reach a large number of students, while turning the Internet into an accessible and convenient platform for criminal activity. Thus, for example, and as detailed in section 12 of the facts of the amended indictment, the defendants were not afraid to distribute a TikTok video in which they offered fraudulent services.
In the context of the aforementioned video, it is impossible not to pay attention to the worrying features in it (which are reminiscent of nationalist videos), when the character who appears in the video is masked, with dramatic music in Arabic in the background, and the speaker identifies himself as the military spokesman of the General High School.
- The fraudulent industry employed by the defendants, with an emphasis on the scope of the activity, intensified the harm to the public as a whole: students, teachers, institutions of higher education, the Ministry of Education, and the public coffers.
Moreover, the defendants' appeals on social networks and in the wider Diaspora, sometimes to hundreds of thousands of people (see paragraphs 10 and 11), exacerbated the damage to public order, public trust, and the image of law enforcement institutions.
- We are dealing with criminal activity that continued for several years and during the years 2019-2023. The defendants could have stopped their criminal activity during those years, but chose not to do so, and in a manner that also indicates the degree of their guilt.
The offenses committed by the defendants, together with the other conspirators, while maintaining a kind of "partnership" and operating it for several years, carry special severity.
- Consideration must be given to the enormous scope of the criminal activity described in the amended indictment, while the defendants offered each applicant a "product" worth every pocket and priced between ILS 50 and ILS 300 per exam.
In the context of the enormous and extraordinary scope of the criminal activity described in the indictment, it should be recalled that in our case, the defendants, together with the other conspirators, received fraudulent payment in exchange for solving exams in at least 951 cases and in about 20 matriculation exaMs. In addition, they carried out 951 transactions with prohibited property and resorted to cunning and deception with the intention of evading tax on income in the amount of ILS 600,000.