Key takeaway: Payment instructions that arrive with a request for secrecy deserve independent verification, even when the caller sounds like the CEO or the company’s outside counsel.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has charged three foreign nationals with a scheme that allegedly used what the Justice Department calls “super intelligence” to impersonate corporate executives and attorneys and defraud companies of more than $129 million.
Prosecutors named three defendants. Jacob Soall, 41, is from Marbella, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Sharon Hazan, 54, is from Israel. Guy Sheetrit, 42, is from Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Soall and Hazan were arrested in Spain on June 17 and August 5, 2026, and Sheetrit was arrested in the United Kingdom on September 7, 2026. Extradition requests are pending. Each defendant faces seven counts, including wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering, and all are presumed innocent.
Prosecutors allege the group typically posed as chief executives to contact employees and claimed a confidential financial transaction required help. Employees were then directed to purported lawyers at large international law firms, who were also impersonated, and told to wire money to accounts the conspiracy controlled. The funds were converted to cryptocurrency and split among participants.
Soall allegedly posed mostly as United Kingdom attorneys and kept a handwritten script titled “Lawyer Call” with language meant to keep victim employees from discussing the deal with coworkers. Gizmodo reported that the script cited confidentiality and insider-trading concerns.
The indictment lists victims including a United Kingdom fintech company (about $11.58 million), a Massachusetts mutual fund company (about $4.64 million) and a Florida pet food company (about $5.24 million). It also lists hospital systems in Missouri and California and a bank in Rhode Island. Victim funds were wired to accounts in the United States, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Austria, Slovakia and China, according to the release.
In a November 7 follow-up, Gizmodo reported that Hazan allegedly boasted of laundering more than $400 million over three years and of being “number one all over the world” among professional money launderers. U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said the technology “offers tremendous potential” but that some people seek to use it for criminal goals. FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr. said the FBI is adapting its capabilities as criminals weaponize emerging technologies.
Why it matters: Business email compromise has moved from spoofed emails to live calls that imitate executives and lawyers, which weakens any verification that depends on recognizing a familiar voice. The case also shows how quickly proceeds leave through cryptocurrency and accounts in nine jurisdictions, which leaves victims little time to recover funds. Finance teams, processors and fintechs should require callbacks to known numbers and a second approver for any wire tied to a confidential deal.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, and Gizmodo