The Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office Civil Division sued a range of haredi-linked entities known as “Kehillat Hamatmidim” and their owners for NIS 52,236,952 million for allegedly defrauding the state into paying them subsidies, including forging 1500 false ID cards.
The fraud occurred between 2008-2010 and added up to NIS 43,000,000, but that amount comes up to NIS 52,236,952 million when taking into account the time that has passed.
The complaint stated that the 36 defendants filed numerous false requests with the Education Ministry on behalf of the entities using different names which appeared to have different owners and different locations.
In reality, the lawsuit alleged, all of the “different” entities and owners were strawmen companies for a smaller number of entities and owners who controlled all of them and received all of the state funds.
In order to convince the Education Ministry, the complaint said that the defendants submitted forged documents to make it appear as if they were educational institutions operating according to law.
The forged documents included the forged ID cards and the false representations included lists of students who were not in fact students at the institutions.
In one case of a snap inspection, the defendants even brought some of the persons whose faces were used on false ID cards to the education institution being inspected and gave them their false ID cards to try to convince the inspector that they were real students even as the persons had not been at the institution previously.
Many of the defendants listed were previously indicted in a criminal case in 2012 with this civil damages case following the earlier case in parallel.
