Israel collars ‘hi-tech spies'

Among the 18 are Michael Haephrati, 41, who was arrested last week in Britain along with his wife, Ruth Brier-Haephrati, 28. It is claimed that Haephrati developed a Trojan on behalf of three of Israel's largest private investigation firms.

Police Superintendent Roni Hindi, head of the special fraud investigation team, told Associated Press that the private investigators sneaked the program into the computers of their clients' major competitors via seemingly benign email attachments.

The trojan gave the private investigators complete access - over the internet - to their victims' computers.

Author Amnon Jackont discovered the software was being used when he began discovering that excerpts of his unpublished book were showing up on the internet.

He realised he had some kind of Trojan and told the police he suspected the spy was his stepdaughter's ex-husband - Michael Haephrati. The police then uncovered what they are dubbing Israel's worst case of industrial espionage.

Accused are a car company that imports Volvos, which police said spied on another that imported Volkswagens. Two cell phone companies, Cellcom and Pele-phone, were accused of spying on Partner.

Other victims included the main TV cable company, HOT, a bottled water outfit and Ace Hardware. However many of the 18 people arrested have denied breaking the law. A brief for one said that the software was legal.

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