The court adopted the plea bargain and sentenced the defendant, who has no criminal record, to 24 months in prison and compensation in the amount of ILS 65,000 along with a suspended sentence. It was noted that the agreed punishment is lenient only in the exceptional circumstances of the case, and since the court does not easily intervene in an agreed punishment in a plea bargain, it should be adopted.
- Criminal Case (Tel Aviv District) 52660-03-14 State of Israel v. Kleiner (October 19, 2014) The defendant was convicted after managing evidence of multiple offenses of fraudulently influencing the price of a security and breach of trust in a corporation under the Securities Law, and of multiple offenses of theft by a manager and theft by an authorized person under the Penal Law. It was determined that he abused his position, and above the trust of the companies in which he was an officer, and the trust of his superiors, and harmed the public's trust in the capital market. The profits generated by the defendant amounted to ILS 400,000. The court considered the abuse of the relationship of trust, and the restitution of the sums he had received, and that he himself had ceased to commit the offenses. The punishment range was set at between two and four years in prison, and the defendant was sentenced to 18 months in prison, deviating from the punishment range for rehabilitation considerations, along with an accompanying punishment.
- I also considered the ruling to which counsel for the defendants referred, some of which was the Magistrate's Court's ruling or appeals and the request for leave to appeal against sentences handed down by him - but I did not find it relevant to our case. These are cases in which fraud and theft offenses were committed, inter alia, against a complainant or concrete complainants, outside the framework of economic activity in the capital market, and without special sophistication as in our case, as well as tax offenses. In some cases, agreed punishments were adopted in a plea bargain, and in some cases, the punishment was even deviated from the punishment range due to rehabilitation considerations. In our case, as stated, the offenses were committed in the framework of activity in an unsupervised trading arena that offered clients the opportunity to trade in CFDs, alongside a considerable built-in risk, knowledge gaps with the customers, and the potential for tremendous damage, especially taking into account the thousands of potential customers to whom the defendants approached. It is clear that the sophistication and the environment of the offenses add severity to the acts, which, in contrast to many of the acts in the case law to which the defense attorneys have referred, are difficult revelations, which even increases the temptation to commit them and requires real punishment.
See and notice Criminal Appeal 394/20 Chen v. State of Israel (November 2, 2021), Criminal Appeal Authority 8443/15 Yitzhak Hagoli v. State of Israel (December 15, 2015), Criminal Appeal Authority 2847/10 Jimmy Tzur v. State of Israel (April 15, 2010), Criminal Case (Tel Aviv District) 34517-08-24 State of Israel v. Shirazi et al. (December 12, 2024), Criminal Appeal Sentence (Haifa) 47204-03-18 Eliran Azoulay v. State of Israel (31.5.2018), Criminal Case (Shalom Krayot) 7776-10-17 State of Israel v. Yigal Amiga (23.12.2018), Criminal Case (Shalom Netanya) 17095-09-09 State of Israel v. Graisman (23.9.2012), Criminal Case (Shalom Tel Aviv) 45939-08-18 State of Israel v. PETROV (6.11.2018). In criminal appeal 7621/14 Aharon Goodsteiner et al. v. State of Israel (March 1, 2017), this is also a completely different circumstance.
- It should also be remembered that as the judge (as described at the time) Hayut in criminal appeal 3877/16 Jabali vs. the State of Israel (November 17, 2016) in paragraph 5 of the judgment:
"As it has been held more than once, 'there is no identical between the appropriate punishment range and the customary sentencing policy, and it has been clarified that the appropriate punishment range embodies 'a moral decision based on various considerations' and that the sentencing policy for the given offense is only one of those considerations" (Criminal Appeal 322/16 Anonymous v. State of Israel, [published in Nevo] at paragraph 5 (October 9, 2016); Criminal Appeal 1323/13 Hassan v. State of Israel, [published in Nevo] at paragraph 9 (June 5, 2013)). It was further ruled that determining the appropriate range of punishment is not an arithmetic matter, and that the court has a certain scope of flexibility in this context that should not be interfered with, especially if the punishment that was ultimately imposed does not deviate from the proper and appropriate."
- After examining the rule detailed above, and taking into account the principle of uniformity of punishment "which requires maintaining an appropriate ratio between the sentences of defendants in the same affair according to the degree of their guilt" (Criminal Appeal 8345/15 Ohana v. State of Israel (September 19, 2017) para. 35, Justice Mazuz), the sentencing ranges for the prison sentence will be determined as follows: Defendant 1 will be sentenced to 13 to 24 months in prison, and Defendant 2 will be sentenced to 10 to 20 months in prison. Defendant 3 has eight to 16 months in prison. Admittedly, all the defense attorneys reiterated their petition for a sentence that does not include imprisonment behind bars for the defendants, and all the defendants were even sent to receive an opinion from the Commissioner of Public Service on the basis of their request, while it was clarified that this does not indicate that this is the sentence that will be imposed. However, after examining all the facts and the arguments of the aforementioned parties, my conclusion is that by virtue of the principle of proportionality, there is no reason to determine in the case of defendants 1 and 2 a punishment compound that includes a prison sentence that allows him to be served with community service in light of the actual harm to the values protected by their actions.
- As to the scope of the fine: At the time of determining it, I considered the actions of the defendants, including the scope of the offenses, which are not very high. At the same time, the fact that these were economic offenses were committed for the purpose of generating profits and the clear importance of imposing appropriate fines in these circumstances (see, for example, Criminal Appeal 7068/06 State of Israel v. Ariel Electrical Engineering, Traffic Lights and Control in Tax Appeals (May 31, 2007), paragraph 14: "As rational persons who commit the offense in order to gain profits, such a fine is capable of sterilizing the motivation that gives rise to such arrangements").
- As the legislature commands, when determining the amount of the fine, I also considered the financial situation of the defendants. With regard to defendant 1, I have given my opinion that he is unemployed, pays the sum of ILS 4,000 per month as part of the insolvency proceeding, his wife earns about ILS 5,500 per month, and he is caring for two minors. With regard to Defendant 2, I have given my opinion that he is divorced and the father of two minors. In relation to defendant 3, he is currently employed as an employee of a company engaged in the marketing of lighting fixtures and is in an insolvency proceeding and pays a sum of ILS 150 per month. I also considered that defendants 1 and 2 deposited in the court's coffers the sum of ILS 13,400 in order to compensate the victims of the offense, and after arguing for the sentence, the accuser announced that no compensation was required in this case, and her request is that these sums be taken into account when determining the fine. In the weighting detailed above, the fines will be determined as follows: Defendant 1 between ILS 50,000 and ILS 100,000, Defendant 2 between ILS 35,000 and ILS 70,000, and Defendant 3 between ILS 20,000 and ILS 50,000.
Determining the appropriate punishment within the compound