TELEGRASS ISRAELI WEED MARKETPLACE FOUNDER SENTENCED TO 8 YEARS FOR RUNNING CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION

Telegrass Israeli Weed Marketplace Founder Sentenced to 8 Years for Running Criminal Organization

After a lengthy five-year legal battle, Amos Dov Silver and other employees of Telegrass, which became a channel for dealing marijuana and other illegal substances, were convicted of a series of drug trading offenses

May 07th, 17PM May 07th, 17PM

The founder of Telegrass, an Israeli app-based drug marketplace, was sentenced on Tuesday to eight years in prison as part of a plea deal after he was convicted of running a criminal organization and drug trafficking through the service.

The sentence marks the end of a lengthy five-year legal battle that began in 2019 when Silver was first arrested in Ukraine before being extradited to Israel. His arrest, along with those of 42 other Telegram employees, was part of a joint effort with enforcement agencies abroad which included an undercover sting operation.

According to the indictment, Silver, and a team of 100 employees managed over 3,500 drug dealers through Telegrass, which was essentially a WhatsApp-style channel operating over the encrypted-messaging application Telegram.

Initially, the ruling stated that Telegrass, and therefore Silver, allowed the sale of drugs to minors, and committed extortion and tax evasion, but as part of the plea deal these sections were removed, leaving only the accusation that Telegrass allowed for the illegal sale of dangerous drugs such as LSD and MDMA.

Silver's co-founder Barel Levy was also convicted and sentenced to seven and half years in prison, alongside other employees who were given lighter punishments.

After his 2019 arrest, Silver spent three years in Israeli detention, until it was decided to release him to house arrest with electronic ankle monitoring. His time spent in detention will be deducted from the eight-year sentence that was handed down by Israel's Central District court.

In 2017, before Silver's Telegrass-specific legal troubles began (in 2012 he was convicted and imprisoned for three months for growing marijuana in his home), he was profiled by Haaretz where he spoke about Telegrass as an ideological project, "another step forward in the fight to legalize marijuana."

Silver's public defender attorneys, Itai Bar Oz and Nitzan Beilin, referenced the entrepreneur's principled stance in a statement released after his sentence was announced. "It is clear that Amos founded Telegrass not for financial gain, but that his goal was to make cannabis accessible to the entire population. In our opinion, the punishment is too severe, but as the court pointed out - Amos took it upon himself and actually made it easier on the other defendants," the statement read.

According to the indictment, the drug deals carried out during Silver's time at Telegrass constituted a significant part of the total drug trade in Israel, and the organization's income amounted to approximately 30 million shekels.

2024-05-07T14:58:35Z dg43tfdfdgfd