Iran’s Fordo underground uranium enrichment site is shown following U.S. airstrikes on June 22, which might have resulted in charges against two Israelis on Thursday. File Photo courtesy of Maxar Technologies/EPA-EFE
An Israeli court has indicted a military reservist and a civilian for using classified information while wagering on military operations, defense officials announced Thursday.
Prosecutors said the alleged bettors accessed classified information and used it to place bets on the prediction-based betting forum Polymarket, The Times of Israel reported.
The two face charges accusing them of serious national security offenses, bribery and obstruction of justice. Officials didn’t reveal their identities.
Officials for the Israeli Defense Ministry police and Shin Bet security agency announced the suspects’ arrests.
“The defense establishment emphasizes that placing such bets, based on secret and classified information, poses a real security risk to [Israel Defense Forces] operations and to the security of the state,” the officials said in a joint statement.
They said they would punish “the acts attributed to the defendants with utmost severity and will act decisively to thwart and bring to justice anyone involved in the unlawful use of classified information.”
The pair’s alleged wagering did not cause any operational harm, the two agencies said.
Attorneys representing the accused reservist described their client as a “man with many rights who has made a significant contribution to the security of the state” in a statement to NBC News.
“The indictment that was filed accuses our client of providing ‘confidential information when he is not authorized to do so’ after the State Attorney’s Office was convinced that there was no reason to attribute to him what was initially investigated as suspicion — an intention to harm national security. No serious security offense or negative motive is attributed to our client in this context.”
The attorneys said the indictments were flawed and based on an improperly conducted investigation, which caused a security violation.
An Israeli Public Broadcasting Corp. outlet in January reported Shin Bet investigators were looking into accusations that one or more people in the country’s defense system used classified information to wager on Polymarket.
In June, a user on the betting forum won about $150,000 by placing several wagers totaling tens of thousands of dollars on Israeli military actions in Iran, which prompted the investigation.
Israel and the United States conducted a joint operation against several Iranian uranium enrichment sites on the night of June 21-22. The reports didn’t indicate if that was the military action upon which the bets were wagered.
A court-imposed gag order prevents Israeli news outlets and others from discussing the details of the case.
