Indictment in the Small Business Finance Industry’s “Long Running Mysterious Fraud”

There has been a major break in the case of the industry’s Long Running Mysterious Fraud, an indictment. Less than a year after deBanked ran a story about a sophisticated scheme employed to steal millions from merchants, funders, and lenders through a network of stolen identities and cryptocurrency exchanges, a criminal complaint was quietly filed under seal on February 24, 2025 against an individual named Saul Shalev with addresses in Brooklyn and Israel. He is currently thirty-six years old. On August 20, 2025 that complaint progressed to a sealed indictment and on October 3, 2025 all the filings were finally made public.

Shalev may still be at large. He has dual American/Israeli passports. The original criminal complaint states that he traveled to Israel in February 2019 and had not returned to the United States since. IP addresses, email accounts, and other internet data were used by law enforcement in its investigation. The criminal complaint says that the scheme was still going on earlier this year and that more than 25 victims of the scheme have already been identified.

Shalev, who is innocent until proven guilty, is charged with Wire Fraud, Money Laundering, Aggravated Identity Theft, and Aiding and Abetting.

Original criminal complaint
Indictment