The Counter-deception Blog

A complex scam: identity theft to get young women from the Ukraine identity papers and visa to get to Israel, fraud in getting Israeli re-settlement aid for the women, and then sex trafficing in Israel. The Israelis don't give away their detection clues, but there are several possible points mentioned in the story where they might catch this scam (e.g., the consulate visa application).

40 arrested in 'olim' sex scam

Etgar Lefkovits, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 27, 2004

Jerusalem police have uncovered a sophisticated international network of trading in women, which operated under the guise of new immigrants from the Ukraine who took on fake Jewish identities, swindling the state of millions of dollars, police announced Monday.
The affair came to light following a months-long undercover police investigation which found that Israeli Jewish men, including new immigrants, were enlisting young Ukrainian women in financial duress to take on the identities of Jews living in the Ukraine in order to receive the absorption basket afforded by the state to new immigrants, police said. The young women, who put in requests for aliya with their fictitious husbands at the Israeli Consulate in the Ukraine, agreed to pay the ringleaders $40,000 as well as the full absorption rights they would receive in return for the fake papers and the phony identities enabling them to immigrate.
After the women arrived in Israel as new immigrants, they would work as prostitutes while their 'husbands and children' would return to the CIS, police said.
Police believe that at least 70 families were "absorbed" in Israel in such a fashion, at a cost of millions of dollars to the state.
The women would pay the ringleaders the money they owed them from the salaries they received in various escort services operating both in Jerusalem and in other major Israeli cities.
40 people have been arrested over the last few days in the scam, with five of the key suspects remanded in custody at the Jerusalem Magistrate's court by ten days, police said.
Under a court order, police seized bank accounts totaling NIS 3 million, apartments and cars belonging to the suspects in the affair.
"We are talking about a well-oiled operation whose members exploited the fact that we are a country that absorbs immigrants, and caused major financial damage to the state," Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco said.