European authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Israeli cyber fraudster Giri Shalon, among other Israeli scammers, but the former FBI informant is now running an online gambling site after returning to Israel in 2021, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
Police and prosecutors in Europe now accuse Chalon of being part of a large criminal operation that targeted tens of thousands of victims, and are questioning whether the FBI was running Chalon or the latter was running the FBI, according to Bloomberg.
Shalon, who turned FBI informant, built a global criminal organization while working for US federal investigators, according to a report published by Bloomberg.
Plea of guilty
Shallon, who was convicted in 2015 of hacking JPMorgan and stock fraud, agreed to a deal under which he would plead guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence, and began working with the FBI and other federal agencies, according to the newspaper, which indicated that he helped combat Russian organized crime through… The Internet, and has become an essential cadre in the war against cybercriminals.
Testimony in federal court in New York last Thursday revealed that Shalon built and ran a massive new fraud empire in Europe while working for the FBI, the newspaper reported.
During his time in law enforcement, according to former officials and prosecutors, Shalon infiltrated hacking groups, gathered evidence and even traveled to certain countries under the supervision of federal agents, providing information for four years on Russian mafia money laundering operations, cybercriminal ringleaders and cyberattacks, the newspaper reported.
In return for his work, he was sentenced to just 10 months in prison and a $400 million fine to be paid from his ill-gotten gains, rather than the decades of time commensurate with his crimes, the paper says.
After serving his sentence, Shalon and his family moved to his luxurious home in New York.
criminal empire
According to European law enforcement authorities, Shalon used his time as an FBI informant to build an online criminal empire that operated mostly in Sweden, Germany, Austria and Britain, and investigators identified call centers operating in Ukraine, Bulgaria and Georgia, among other countries within his network, the newspaper reported.
This was under the supervision of a company called Tradologic, which Shallon was found to be secretly running, and which provided the technological infrastructure for and financed the fraudulent activities.
Another Israeli, Tal Jaki Z.F., is now serving a 7-year prison sentence in Germany for his role in the scheme, according to the Israeli newspaper.
