Gery Shalon, An Israeli cybercriminal mastermind, turned FBI informant, may have built a global crime organization while working with American federal investigators, according to a report on Bloomberg. Shalon who was convicted in 2015 for hacking JPMorgan Bank and for stock fraud, agreed to a plea bargain and began working with the FBI and other federal agencies. He helped in the fight against Russian online organized crime and became a vital asset in the war against cyber criminals.
But according to testimony in the New York Federal Court on Thursday, while working with the FBI, Shalon built and ran a massive new fraud empire in Europe.
In his work for law enforcement, according to former officials and to prosecutors, Shalon infiltrated hacking groups, collected evidence and even traveled to certain countries under the supervision of federal agents. For four years he provided valuable information on the Russian mafia's money laundering operations and on the heads of online criminal gangs and on cyberattacks.
In exchange for his work, he was given a sentence of only 10 months in jail and fined $400 million to be paid out of his ill-gotten gains, rather than a decades-long sentence that was befitting his crimes. After serving his time, Shalon moved his family into a sprawling home in New York.
According to European law enforcement, Shalon used his time as an informant for the FBI to build a criminal online empire that operated mostly in Sweden, Germany Austria and the UK. Investigators identified call centers working in Ukraine, Bulgaria and the Georgian Republic, among other countries. All under a company called Tradologic, which Shalon, was found to be running covertly. The company provided technological infrastructure for fraudulent activity and financed them. Another Israeli, Tal-Jacki Z.F, is now serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for his part in the scheme.
The Europeans built a considerable file on Tradologic and have issued arrest warrants for several Israelis involved including Shalon. But the former informant, who now runs an online gambling site after returning to Israel in 2021, has remained free.