Police bust operation sending 5-6 million text messages a day selling illegal drugs
Machines operated in Bnei Brak by ex-IDF tech unit officer, but cops believe criminal gang behind enterprise; law enforcement admits taking machines offline won’t solve wider issue
Police have arrested a man suspected of being behind millions of text messages offering drugs for sale that have been flooding the phones of Israelis in recent months.
According to the Channel 12 news report Friday, police said the operation was based out of a warehouse in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak where machines containing hundreds of SIM cards were programmed to send five-six million text messages per day.
The suspect was named by police as 30-year-old Kobi Magenzi, who had no criminal record and until a few months ago served as an officer in an elite technological unit in the IDF.
According to the report, Magenzi claimed he was working alone and earned only NIS 2,000 (approximately $580) per month from the operation.
“Until now this person lived a normal life. But he did have a great deal of technological knowledge,” said Chief Superintendent Dodi Katz, commander of the national cyber unit in the police. “Let’s put it this way — our adversary here is an adversary of the highest level that we could find.”
However, police admitted that there was presumed to be a criminal organization behind the technical operation as it would require significant financial capacity.
“Three machines were seized in this warehouse, with each machine having the capacity to insert 256 SIM cards — each SIM card is a phone number that can send 5,000 messages,” Ariel Nave, head of the investigation department in the Israel Police Lahav 433’s cyber unit told Channel 12. It was unclear when the operation took place.
“Multiply by 256 — that’s almost 1.3 million messages from each machine, and that’s how we arrived at the figure of 5-6 million messages that can be distributed in one day,” he said.
Nave said the system was used by drug dealers who were operating through networks including the dark net, also known as the deep web, an online universe that works in parallel to the internet we know.
It is a realm many people are unaware of — a zone where users can surf anonymously and largely without a trace, and is used by arms and drug dealers, pedophiles, terrorists and cybercriminals, among others.
Nave said that the Bnei Brak bust which put a stop to those particular machines was particularly gratifying as children were also receiving the messages and were able to buy drugs.
He described the moment investigators walked into the warehouse and found the machines: “It was tremendous, like seeing a baby born. It was just amazing, really.”
Police said that while this particular operation was successful, it would not put an end to the deluge of text messages with Whatsapp links to drug dealers.
According to Channel 12, the police cyber unit is cooperating with law enforcement agencies in a number of countries in an attempt to locate the server farms through which the messages were sent, however officials are aware that for every operation busted, more will spring up in its place and that the problem is only solvable if cell companies start to take action on the matter.
