The Ponzi scheme that's trapping Israel’s ultra-Orthodox
The ultra-Orthodox, often hesitant to approach the police out of fear of their name being tarnished, are being fleeced by their own community members.
In the past few years, check-cashing scams and other ruses have become a real plague on the community. Every few months, the ultra-Orthodox press reports on some ultra-Orthodox con man or another who allegedly bilked yeshiva students out of tens of millions of shekels and fled, leaving young couples and families with children penniless and burdened with debt. The scams themselves straddled the border between speculative and irresponsible investments and malicious con jobs devised to rob investors of their money.
The latest such story to send shock waves through the ultra-Orthodox community took place over the past few months in the ultra-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak, when Yaakov Domb, the owner of a check-cashing business, lost tens of millions of shekels that individuals and institutions in the ultra-Orthodox community invested with him. He then disappeared without a trace.
