I found it appropriate to emphasize the case of the two lawyers who went astray.
In the case of the one, who was convicted of 11 charges in the District Court, and the Supreme Court acquitted him of all the charges attributed to him due to doubt.
In the case of the other, who was convicted of four charges in the District Court, the court acquitted him of a number of offenses attributed to him and ruled that his criminal involvement in the acts of forgery and fraud was proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It was determined that he took an active part in forging documents by using his purity as a lawyer. He verified forged documents and submitted them to the various authorities, knowing that they were forged. It was also noted that he was aware of the purpose of the forgery. The theft of real estate rights from their legal owners is intended for the purpose of financial gains. The Supreme Court left the sentence imposed on him by the District Court - 30 months in prison, but increased the fine and sentenced him to ILS 120,000 instead of ILS 60,000.
Despite this, the Supreme Court emphasized that the penalties imposed by the District Court "fall short of the appropriate punishment threshold" and ruled that, as a rule, the punishment range for forgery and fraud that can harm the credibility of the Land Registry, and therefore the punishment range must range from a minimum of a few years in prison and climb upwards according to the number of cases, the severity and sophistication of the perpetrators of the offenses , and noted that "... In our opinion, the threshold of punishment in such a case should be much higher, up to two or three times higher."
- Criminal Appeal Sentence (Beer Sheva District) 37399-11-23 Shai Alfasi v. State of Israel (February 21, 2024) - The appellant was convicted of a long list of fraudulent offenses (photocopying of customers' credit cards in the restaurant where he worked as a waiter, using them, impersonation, etc.) in a total amount of more than ILS 227,500 in the case of 25 crime victims. The Magistrate's Court set a range of 5-9 years in prison and sentenced the appellant to 5.5 years in prison, compensation for the victims of the offense and a fine of ILS 20,000. The District Court rejected his appeal against the severity of the sentence. Contrary to our case, the appellant is not a lawyer and this is a credit card fraud.
- Criminal Case (Beer Sheva District) 19695-04-19 State of Israel v. Avraham Weizmann (25.2.2020) - The defendant was convicted in an indictment holding 9 counts of committing offenses of fraud and forgery, between the years 2016-2019. Antitrust The defendant received from the complainants a total sum of ILS 2,329,119, which he did not return to the complainants, and even attempted to fraudulently, directly or indirectly, an additional sum of ILS 15,640,000. The defendant falsely presented himself to the complainants as the owner of rights in various lands and as a representative of owners of rights in the land, and fraudulently sold them these lands. In order to commit the fraudulent acts, the defendant forged documents, used forged stamps and signatures that were pretended to be the signatures of lawyers or the signatures and seals of companies and individuals with rights to the land, and made false written representations and criminal appeals to the complainants, according to which he was authorized to sell them these lands.
In this regard, the parties presented a "term arrangement" in which the accuser limited herself to an appropriate sentence of 5.5 years in prison, while counsel for the defendant pleaded freely and petitioned for a sentence of 26 months in prison.