THE private investigator facing extradition to the US on charges of computer hacking also allegedly worked for a London leading law firm and one of its senior partners.
Amit Forlit, 57, an Israeli, last week failed to block his extradition from the UK. He is accused of conspiracy and wire fraud.
Forlit is alleged to have worked alongside convicted hacker Aviram Azari, who was sentenced to 80 months in prison in the US after pleading guilty to what the US Department of Justice described as a ‘massive spear phishing campaign’.
Documents from the hearing detail the charges for which Forlit was indicted by a New York Grand Jury on 30 November 2022. He is alleged to have targeted ‘over 100 victim corporations, organisations and individuals’ to steal ‘confidential business and personal information’ for profit.
For his work allegedly undertaken for a Washington DC lobbying firm alone, he was paid $16 million between 2013 and 2018. The work was summarised as being related to two projects, one discrediting climate change activists and the other concerning Argentinian debt relief.
He was described by both the US in their filings and District Judge John McGarva in his judgment as a ‘cyber-mercenary’.
Forlit was also previously named in connection with another alleged hack-for-hire scheme, this time for the law firm Dechert LLP and its disgraced former London head of white-collar crime, Neil Gerrard.
Filings in that case outline how he was brought on to work with another private investigator, London-based Stuart Page, to support Dechert’s investigation into the apparent misappropriation of a large amount of UAE emirate Ras Al Khaimah’s state funds.
An affidavit from Page outlines ‘Project Beech’, on which he worked with Forlit. Page is alleged to have reported to RAK executive Jamie Buchanan - revealed as the neighbour of Gerrard during a London trial in 2020 - from early 2015 onwards and also to Gerrard during his engagement.
In February 2015, Page decided to instruct Forlit and his company to assist in his investigation, it is claimed. In a parallel of the evidence in the Washington lobbying case, Page details that Forlit had told him that his company and his subcontractors used SIGINT – signal intelligence, ‘which is intelligence-gathering by the interception of communications’ and ‘hacking techniques’ to secure information.
Of some of the information included in the reports produced for their client, Page stated that ‘It was obvious to me (and it would have been obvious to anyone else reading the reports) that such documents were obtained as a result of unauthorised access to computers.’
From 2015 to 2020, Page was paid ‘around $300,000 per month’ for his work for Dechert and RAK, of which ‘approximately $250,000’ was then paid to Forlit and his company. The importance of the claims of hacking in the preparation of these reports is highlighted in Page’s admittance that, when his budget was threatened to be cut, the prospect of ‘losing access to some of Amit’s sources and methods’ ensured that the payments continued.
Page also discusses the clandestine nature of the reporting to his and Forlit’s client. Forlit would send a coded message to Page, to be deleted, letting him know to check the drafts of an email account that only the two of them and Page’s assistant could access, it is said.
This would be downloaded to a laptop with no connection to Page’s company, printed on a standalone printer, and the draft overwritten, allegedly, all to avoid creating a trail between sender and recipient.
From there, electronic copies of the reports were deleted and hard copies provided to Buchanan and, in some cases, to Gerrard himself. Page outlines an instance in which someone other than Gerrard or his secretary opened one of the reports, and Gerrard was deeply concerned, requiring Forlit to send future copies to Gerrard’s home.
Gerrard was worried about holding meetings at Dechert’s London offices, reportedly. Page recounts that attendees would have to sign in and present identification, and in late 2016 or early 2017 Gerrard became concerned of there being ‘a written record indicating that Amit (or any other member of Amit’s team) had visited him’, so future meetings were moved to Buchanan or Forlit’s hotel room.
As with his work for the Washington lobbying company, where the fruits of his alleged hacking were deployed in the media and in litigation, his research for Dechert formed the backbone of a case against a US aviation executive, Farhad Azima. RAK’s case at trial was that they had innocently discovered the hacked data online - a story which has since been disproved, including by Page.
Indeed, Page outlines that, rather than stating that Forlit had discovered the hacked data online, a cover story was prepared and finalised at a ‘small boutique hotel in the mountains’ of Switzerland, at which Forlit provided security, where Gerrard conducted a ‘mock trial’ as ‘judge and the cross-examining counsel’ to ‘perfect the narrative’ of the cover story.
Papers in another court case issued a damning finding against Gerrard, concluding in May 2022 that he was a ‘highly unreliable and at times dishonest witness’ who had committed ‘serious and serial wrongdoing’.
Gerrard retired from Dechert in 2020, but litigation from the work he did continues. A report recently made public in one of these cases shows that another private investigator working for Dechert, Nicholas Del Rosso, downloaded data allegedly hacked from a US lawyer representing another opponent of RAKIA to his laptop the dat after his cross-examination in Azima’s trial.
Dechert have settled Azima’s claims against them in both the UK and US for the alleged hacking of Azima’s data, but claims against Forlit and other alleged co-conspirators are ongoing.
This, and possibility of a full trial of the allegations against Forlit should he be extradited to the US, promise to shine a greater light on this murky world, hidden by extensive subterfuge. ‘Cyber-mercenaries’ like Forlit rely on secrecy, as adroitly summarised in a message from Forlit to a colleague following Azari’s arrest, as quoted in the US filings for his extradition: ‘why the f*ck was he sending emails what a dumb arse.’
Dechert commented: “The claims brought by Mr Azima against Dechert involving Mr Forlit were resolved in February 2024 with no admission of liability by the firm.”
