A felon with alleged ties to the Israeli mob and a former Los Angeles Police Department officer have been charged over the kidnapping of an LA teenager flush with cryptocurrency.
On Friday, Deputy District Attorney Jane Brownstone provided details about the kidnapping and the arrests of Gabby Ben and former LAPD officer Eric Halem.
Both of the men have pleaded not guilty to their charges, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Ben, 51, has been convicted of fraud twice and he been deported to Israel, according to court documents. Brownstone claimed during a hearing that Ben has "ties to the Israeli mafia."
Halem, 38, is a 13-year LAPD veteran. He left the force in 2022, and was reportedly considering developing a reality tv show about his career, former associates told the LA Times.
Ben, Halem, and four other men allegedly drove to a luxury high-rise apartment in LA’s Koreatown last December to attempt to abduct a teenager who operated a cryptocurrency business. Once they gained access to the teen's apartment, they found that he was not home, but his girlfriend was. They allegedly found her hiding in a closet and restrained her with LAPD-issued handcuffs.
“Everyone was armed,” Brownstone said. “They claimed they were from the Los Angeles Police Department and they were executing a search warrant.”
According to Brownstone, the kidnappers waited for the teen to return home. Once he did, they handcuffed him as well and demanded he open his crypto wallet on his devices to allow them to steal his money. The teen reportedly tried to bluff his way out of the situation by giving them access to an empty wallet.
The kidnappers allegedly threatened to shoot the teen in the foot and waterboard him in his shower if he did not comply with their demands. The teen finally relented and gave them access to a safe that contained a cryptowallet stored on a thumb drive. The wallet held $350,000 in crypto.
Surveillance video reviewed by police is said to have showed Ben, Halem, and the other alleged kidnappers leaving the apartment approximately 25 minutes after they entered.
Megan Maitia, an attorney representing Halem, questioned the prosecution's version of events. She doubted that a 17-year-old could have accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency.
“How does a 17-year-old do this?” she asked.
She further insisted that Halem did not threaten the teen, but instead an unidentified sixth member of the kidnapping crew who "everyone thought was the most dangerous."
Maitia said Halem was afraid that if he was convicted he'd be killed in prison because he was a police officer.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Victoria Wilson said she would order the LA County Sheriff's Office to protect Halem while he is locked up and awaiting trial. He was not granted bail.
Ben's attorney, Kellen Davis, said that he operated legitimate assisting living facilities for years, and said he should be granted bail as he always complied with court orders connected to the "limited record he does have."
That record includes opening bank accounts for the express purposes of fraud, and defrauding elderly people by pretending to be an HVAC technician, entering their homes, and photographing their license plates and bank statements.
Ben was also denied bail. Wilson said she believed that he and Halem could cause "great bodily harm to others" if they were allowed to bond out of police custody.
