Police arrest man suspected of subverting fraud probe

The suspect, 30, is suspected of leaking internal office documents of haredi student enrollment fraud to yeshivot under investigation.

By JPOST.COM STAFF, JONAH MANDEL
haredi students (do not publish again) (photo credit: FLASH 90)
haredi students (do not publish again)
(photo credit: FLASH 90)
Police fraud and corruption detectives on Thursday arrested a 30-year-old man on suspicion that he leaked information regarding a fraud investigation into haredi yeshivot. The institutions are suspected of inflating the number of students recorded as belonging to yeshivot for the purpose of receiving extra Education Ministry grants.
The man in question was alleged to have passed internal office documents received from a private investigation firm that was hired by the Education Ministry to investigate the suspicious numbers.
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At the end of November, six heads of three haredi educational institutions were arrested on suspicion of defrauding the state of millions of shekels by submitting falsified enrollment forms.
Four additional men were detained, and over a thousand fake identification cards, as well as the machinery to produce them, were confiscated in the joint operation by investigators from the Jerusalem District Police Central Unit and fraud detectives.
Police believe that the institutions – located in Ramat Beit Shemesh, Betar Illit and Jerusalem’s Me’a She’arim neighborhood – have for years been forging ID cards for people who are not enrolled in the yeshivot in order to receive monthly financial support from the Education Ministry, claiming that hundreds were studying at the yeshivot, when in fact only dozens were.