A police officer was indicted in Haifa District Court on Sunday on allegations that he used confidential police databases to obtain women’s personal details and subjected them and their relatives to a years-long campaign of sexual harassment, threats, and extortion through fake WhatsApp accounts.
The 15-count indictment filed by the Justice Ministry’s Police Investigation Department names 28-year-old Samer Sheikh of Abu Snan, who served in the traffic division of the police’s Yarkon district.
He is charged with offenses including extortion by threats, sexual harassment, threats, impersonation, invasion of privacy, fraud, causing an indecent act, fraud, and breach of trust.
According to the indictment, Sheikh carried a police tablet connected to internal databases even when he was not on duty and, from 2022 until his arrest, repeatedly used it to retrieve the personal information of numerous women. He allegedly stored screenshots of the information on his personal devices and used it to contact women and members of their families.
Prosecutors said Sheikh created a series of fictitious WhatsApp accounts through which he posed as different people, at times presenting himself as a man and at others using the name and photograph of one of the women.
Police officer secretly records intimate video calls
The indictment describes 14 main complainants, as well as relatives and friends who were allegedly contacted as part of the scheme.
In one of the central counts, Sheikh is accused of secretly recording intimate video calls with a woman with whom he had previously been in a relationship. He later allegedly threatened to distribute the recordings unless she participated in further sexually explicit video calls.
To reinforce the threats, prosecutors said, Sheikh used an intimate image of the woman as the profile photograph of a fictitious account and sent sexual material involving her to her brother and fiancé.
In another count, Sheikh allegedly threatened to publish intimate photographs and videos of a woman unless she performed sexual acts during video calls. The woman ultimately sent him sexually explicit videos in response to the threats, according to the indictment.
Officer continued harassing women after they rejected him
Other counts allege that Sheikh repeatedly sent women unwanted sexual propositions and sexually explicit material, falsely told relatives that women appeared in pornographic videos, and threatened to harm their reputations or distribute intimate content if they did not comply with his demands.
In several cases, he allegedly continued contacting the women after they rejected him, blocked his numbers, or threatened to report him to the police.
The final count focuses on the alleged abuse of his position as a police officer. Prosecutors said Sheikh unlawfully accessed police systems to facilitate the sexual and other offenses described in the indictment, constituting fraud and breach of trust by a public servant.
