Two Israeli men were arrested by Israel Police and indicted for trying to blackmail and extort an unnamed American-based rabbi. Shai Cohen and Simon Suriana allegedly hired two women to seduce the rabbi with the intent of using images of the encounters to blackmail him.
Two Israelis Arrested In Rabbi Blackmail Plot
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Two Israeli men were arrested by Israel Police for trying to blackmail and extort an unnamed American-based rabbi.
The indictment against the two men was entered in Tel Aviv’s Magistrate’s Court today. However, the arrests were made at an unspecified day and date late last month or early this month. The extortion and blackmail plot was allegedly hatched in June.
Shai Cohen and Simon Suriana allegedly hired two women to seduce the rabbi with the intent of using images of the encounters to blackmail him, the Jerusalem Post has reported.
The first woman, referred to only as “B.B.,” was offered $20,000 by Cohen and Suriana to to send a photo of herself dressed suggestively to the rabbi and to request a private meeting. She was to tell the rabbi that she wanted to convert to Judaism.
The second woman, “G.G.,” was allegedly offered a guaranteed salary for life by Cohen for seducing the rabbi. But Cohen secretly filmed “G.G.” performing oral sex on him after she agreed to the deal. He then used that footage to blackmail and extort her, threatening to send a copy of the footage to her boyfriend in Las Vegas and release a copy on the Internet unless she did Cohen’s bidding. Cohen also threatened to physically harm her.
The women were tasked with seducing the rabbi so he could be photographed in compromising positions and recorded having intimate phone calls with the women.
But last month both women went separately to police, who arrested Cohen and Suriana.
The two men now face extortion and conspiracy charges.
The prosecution reportedly asked the magistrate to keep Cohen, who is the alleged mastermind of the plot, jailed until the conclusion of his trial. “There is good reason to suspect that he poses a threat to the safety of the public,” the prosecution reportedly said.