The main defendant in the Telegram affair is on his way to eight years in prison: this morning, (Tuesday), following a mediation process – Amos Dov Silver admitted to a plea deal to a series of charges, and will serve eight years in prison. A plea agreement was also signed with others involved in the case. This is how ynet learned.
Amos Dov Silver was the founder of the Telegram platform “Telegrass” for trading cannabis and its products. He was prosecuted for a series of serious crimes and has been under house arrest for a year and a half.
This morning the settlement was presented to the mediator judge Benny Sagi, the outgoing vice president of the district court in Tel Aviv, who was appointed just this week as the district president in Be’er Sheva. Although the case was conducted in the Lod district, Sagi was asked to bridge the case and the parties, unusually, reached agreements in another district, in Tel Aviv. The defendants admitted to committing the crimes following many witnesses had already testified in the case.
Silver agreed to the punishment, in exchange for leniency for his friends. In addition, the state will not request a conditional arrest once morest him. He actually served almost four years in detention and in Ukraine, so he will only serve four more years in practice and can also apply to a parole board. He was cleared of extortion by threats and drugging a minor, and the charge will be amended. Amos will remain charged with running a criminal organization, and as mentioned, they will not ask for a suspended sentence.
In 2019, Silver was charged with offenses of managing a criminal organization, extortion by threats and offenses of brokering and drug trafficking. As part of the affair, indictments have been filed so far once morest 28 employees and managers of the network. The indictment once morest him describes the development processes of the network, “while taking advantage of the features of the Telegram platform that enabled mediation between drug dealers and their buyers, under the direction of the ‘Telegrass’ management and headed by the accused.” Other defendants were also convicted of money laundering offenses as part of a criminal organization.
As part of the settlement, it was also agreed that Barel Levy – an executive at Telegram – would serve a sentence of six years in prison in practice, but he was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison and the court might reduce up to a year and a half of this sentence if it is convinced, based on professional opinions, that Levy has rehabilitated. Additional defendants will seek prison terms of up to three years. Alongside this, it was agreed that the court would order the confiscation of the sums of money, property, computers and phones seized from the defendants and the imposition of conditional prison sentences and fines. The trial of other defendants in the case continues at this stage.
The trial proceeded slowly for close to five years, with discussions most of which were conducted behind closed doors, due to its precedential nature, the enormous scope of the digital evidence collected as part of the investigation, the multitude of defendants, and the complex issues that arose during the trial regarding digital evidence and the manner in which the existing law should be applied to crimes committed online. The prosecution suffered a blow that the state witness – this was allowed to be published – tried to end his life and in fact did not testify in the trial. After regarding three and a half years in which Silver was detained, before his sentence was decided, it was determined that instead of full detention he would be released to house arrest under electronic handcuffs with close supervision, and he did go home following a long period.
Silver, we will recall, managed to escape in Ukraine just before his extradition to Israel. He was arrested in 2019 in the city of Oman following a manhunt that lasted for two days, and was extradited to Israel and his detention was extended from time to time. He was arrested for the first time in Ukraine in March of that year, at the request of Israel, and at the same time dozens of the operators of the network he headed were arrested in Israel.
Lawyers Itai Bar Oz and Nitzan Beilin, who represent Amos Silver, said: “The charges of extortion by threats, drugging a minor, and tax charges were deleted from the indictment. The facts of the indictment were corrected so that the psychedelic branch was deleted and it was made clear that Amos founded Telegrass not for financial gain, but that his purpose was Making cannabis available to the general population. In our opinion, the punishment is too severe, but as the court pointed out, Amos took it easy on himself and the other defendants in the case. In less than a year, Amos is expected to go up to the parole board, and we are glad that it is clear to everyone that he is not the head of a criminal organization. We hope that Amos and other Telegrass activists will be the last ever to go to prison for cannabis-related offenses.”
Attorney Itai Rosin, who represents Barel Levy, said: “Today we have reached a successful conclusion of one of the ‘flagship’ cases of the prosecutor’s office. After over five years of trial, we were able to refute almost all of the arguments of the prosecution. Today, the state also admits that Telegram’s activity was more social than criminal, and the allegations of embezzlement of hundreds of millions of shekels have also been deleted from the indictment. In the end, Barel Levy, who was the most senior figure in Telegrass in Israel, will serve a three-year prison sentence for the Telegrass case (which will join the prison sentence for another case), this following the prosecutor’s office previously insisted on a punishment of over 10 years in prison.”
According to the verdict, the Telegram organization was established in 2017 and served as a platform for drug trafficking (mainly cannabis) through Telegram. The organization employed more than 100 employees and operated within its framework more than 3,500 drug dealers who marketed and sold drugs to the general public, and paid Telegrass for their activity on Telegram channels, all while hiding the true identity of the drug dealers and the Telegrass people. The organization received from the drug dealers hundreds of thousands of shekels each month, which were divided among the members of the organization, according to their status. As stated in the amended indictment, in which they admitted and were convicted as part of the verdict, minors also purchased drugs through Telegram and even acted as drug dealers, and psychedelic drugs were sold to the public on a dedicated channel.
