Bank Fraud and Identity Theft in Israel: What Olim Do After the Money Moves

Your first move is a notice to the bank or card issuer, and the sooner it happens the better. Under Israel's Payment Services Law 5779-2019, that notice starts an eight-business-day refund clock and fixes how much of the loss you can be left holding.¹ The police complaint and the credit file come next, and both matter, but neither one starts the money moving back.

Here is the part that is specific to you rather than to Israelis generally. Two of the three recovery channels below have an online front door that opens only once you hold Israel's National Identification System login, which the government's own English-language pages brand GovID.⁷ The police complaint is the forgiving one: you can file it through that login or in person at the station nearest your home.⁶ The credit-register personal area, where you view your own report, submit requests and manage access to your credit data, sits behind the same login, and the page describing it sets out no other way in.⁴ Registration is digital, using identifying details plus contact details, and the register recommends having two of six ready before you start: a teudat zehut, a credit card, an Israeli passport, the phone number registered with your kupat holim, a teudat oleh, or answers to two personal questions.⁴ A teudat oleh is on that list by name, which tells you the gate was built to be passable without an Israeli passport and without an Israeli card. Do the enrolment on a quiet evening. Doing it for the first time on the morning the money has gone is the version that goes badly.

Then there is the language layer, and it runs through every step below. The statutory credit report is issued in Hebrew or Arabic, and in Hebrew if you do not ask for a language.³ The mechanism is open to you. The paperwork is not in your language.

TL;DR

• Notice to the issuer is the single time-critical act. It starts the eight-business-day refund duty and stops the daily liability tally.¹
• Freezing the instrument and giving notice are two different acts under two different sections. Do both in the same phone call, and log the time and the channel.¹
• If the provider did not let you give notice or cancel the instrument, at any time, in a reasonable manner, the pre-notice liability cap does not apply to you at all.¹
• The police complaint is filed through GovID or in person, and property and fraud offences are one of the listed categories on the Hebrew service page.⁶
• The Bank of Israel holds the credit register itself, supplies the free annual report and takes correction requests. Private credit bureaus exist under the same law, but they sit downstream of the register rather than in your way.³
• If you still hold a home-country account, a second set of rules is running in parallel on it, and neither bank's staff answers for the other's rules.

> This is general information, not tax, legal, or financial advice. Cross-border (US and UK) rules and Israeli rules interact in complex ways, and the amounts and deadlines below are read from the source documents on the dates stated. Consult a qualified cross-border professional before acting.

What does Israeli law actually promise you after a fraudulent charge?

It promises money back first and argument second. Where you were charged for a payment transaction carried out in the course of misuse, the provider must refund the charged amount, less the amount you are liable for, as soon as possible and no later than eight business days from the day you gave notice of the misuse.¹

The right to take that money back again is narrower than a call-centre script tends to suggest. The provider may re-charge you for the balance only where it is satisfied the use falls into one of two boxes the statute names: that you made the essential component of the instrument available to another person, or that you acted with fraudulent intent. Even then it owes you written notice setting out its reasons at least 15 days before the actual re-charge, plus copies of the documents it holds on request. The one exception the statute writes into that sentence is that where you acted fraudulently, the provider may deliver the notice at the same moment as the charge.¹

The word doing all the work is misuse. The statute defines it as use of a payment instrument, or of an essential component of it, by someone who is not entitled to do so under the payment services contract.¹ A card someone else uses is misuse. A banking session someone else drives with stolen credentials is misuse. A transfer you were persuaded to instruct yourself does not sit inside that definition on its face, so the refund duty in this chapter is not the lever for it; the published route there is the complaint route, and the Bank of Israel unit that receives complaints from customers of banks and credit card companies and resolves disputes is described further down this page.⁹

Two more rights belong in the same phone call. You may ask, at any time, that the provider freeze use of the instrument, and it must freeze it immediately for the period you asked for, up to 14 days unless it allows longer.¹ You are not liable for misuse carried out during a freeze period.¹ The freeze is not the notice, though. Only the notice starts the refund clock, so a newcomer who asks only for a freeze has bought time and started nothing.

Three provisions in the same law matter more to someone who arrived last year than to someone who grew up inside the system. The first is a duty to inform you: your provider must report your charges to you, and the statute says the purpose is proper disclosure and supplying you with the information needed to identify misuse of a payment instrument.¹ Ask at account opening which channel that reporting uses and whether you can read it, because that channel is your detection system. The second is that the law cannot be contracted out of except in the customer's favour, and on a personal account that is absolute; only a business customer above a turnover threshold set in the same section can sign parts of it away.¹ So if a page of terms handed to you at account opening promises less than this article describes, the statute governs and the terms do not.

The third is the one to write down. The pre-notice liability cap, and the carve-out to it, both fall away entirely, and you are not liable at all, if the provider did not enable you to give notice or to cancel the payment instrument, at any time, in a reasonable manner.¹ So log every attempt: the time, the number or channel you tried, what language the line answered in, and what happened. A newcomer who could not get through is not offering an excuse. They are describing a statutory exception, and it only works if it was recorded.

There is also a separate route for a transaction the statute calls a transaction on a deficient document: one with neither a document you signed carrying the beneficiary's identifying detail, your own or the instrument's identifying detail, the amount and the date, nor an admissible institutional record documenting that your identity was verified by an enhanced authentication detail and that you consented to the transaction. If you tell the provider within 30 days of the day it gave you notice of the charge that you did not carry out the transaction, it must refund within eight business days.¹ Note where that 30-day clock starts. It runs from the provider's notice of the charge, not from the date of the transaction.

How much of the loss are you left holding?

Less than most people fear, and the amount is a ceiling rather than an opening position. You bear no liability at all for misuse after notice.¹ For misuse before notice, your liability is the lower of two numbers: the actual total of the transactions carried out during the misuse, or a fixed NIS 75 plus NIS 30 for each day from the day you learned of the theft, loss or misuse until the day you gave notice, subject to a ceiling of NIS 450 where notice was given within 30 days of the first misuse. The statute excludes the day of notice from the count only where you notified on the same day you learned. Those amounts are the ones in the consolidated text the Bank of Israel published with its Chapter F sheet dated 1 July 2024, and the same paragraph lets the Minister set different amounts by order, so read them as the figures in that text rather than as permanent.¹ Section 31 then closes the door: you bear no liability whatsoever for misuse beyond the liability set out in that chapter.¹

Work it through on an oleh six months in who opens the app and finds NIS 6,400 of charges nobody in the household made.

All figures in that table are the ones in the 1 July 2024 consolidated text.¹ One honest caveat on the middle rows: the only endpoint rule the statute spells out is the same-day exclusion, so a provider counting the span slightly differently would move your share by NIS 30 a day. If the number it quotes you is not the number you expected, ask it which days it counted.

Two readings matter more than the arithmetic. First, the daily tally runs from the day you learned, not from the day the thief started, so a fraud you genuinely could not have seen does not quietly accumulate NIS 30 a day against you. Second, the "lower of" test means a small fraud leaves you carrying all of it: NIS 40 of charges spotted and reported the same day costs you NIS 40, not NIS 75.

There is a carve-out worth reading rather than paraphrasing. The cap does not apply, and you are liable for pre-notice misuse, where the use occurred after you made the essential component available to another person, whether or not you knew about the use. Two exceptions bring the cap back: the component was made available in reasonable circumstances for safekeeping only, or was given to a beneficiary in order to give a payment order through them; or the misuse happened after the component was stolen from, or lost by, that other person.¹ A separate section removes the limitation altogether where the payer acted with fraudulent intent in connection with the misuse.¹ Whether typing credentials into a convincing fake site amounts to making the essential component available to another person is a question about those words, so read the words rather than assuming; if a provider invokes that subsection against you, ask it to identify the text it is relying on.

Now the newcomer layer, which is the reason this section is not only arithmetic. The Supervisor of Banks keeps a standing directive on banking services for new immigrants, and its opening paragraphs record what prompted it: cases where clerks of a banking corporation did not give sufficient attention to explaining the operations they were asked to perform for customers who are new immigrants, where those customers had signed the execution orders but did not have clear and specific information about the significance, restrictions and risks, and where new immigrant depositors signed securities purchase orders without adequate information about the risk involved. It tells branch employees to give as detailed an explanation as possible of the significance of the transaction a customer wishes to undertake, and suggests new immigrants be given an explanatory booklet in their own language. Original circular 12 November 1974, still live as version [4] updated 30 December 2020.¹³ Frame it honestly: the directive suggests, it does not entitle, and nothing in it gives you a right to English-language service at a branch. It does give you something concrete to point at when you ask a branch to slow down and explain what you are signing.

That connects to one counter-intuitive line in the liability chapter, useful when a call-centre agent implies otherwise. The provider may ask you for details of the circumstances of the theft, loss or misuse, but your exemption or limitation of liability is not conditional on supplying them, unless the Minister prescribes specific details with committee approval.¹ A newcomer asked to narrate a fraud in Hebrew, at speed, on a recorded line, should know that the cap is not payment for the story.

Which law applies, and why does English-language material keep getting it wrong?

The Payment Services Law 5779-2019, in force since 14 October 2020, and it applies to payment instruments issued before that date too.¹ The Knesset legislation register records it as published 9 January 2019, valid from 14 October 2020, status "in force", with its latest publication dated 4 July 2024, and records the Debit Cards Law 5746-1986 as void with a validity finish date of 14 October 2020.² A separate table in the same register links the two, recording the Payment Services Law as replacing the Debit Cards Law.²¹

This matters to you specifically, because English guidance ages differently from Hebrew guidance here. The Bank of Israel's own English translation of Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive 470, "Payment Cards", is version [14] dated 11/18. It still defines "payment card", "stored value card", "debit card" and "prepaid card" as defined in the Debit Cards Law, 5746-1986. It still contains an operative line imposing sections 7 to 9 of that law on an immediate debit card. And on the exact subject of this page it still says that in the event of misuse of a payment card the issuer shall act as set forth in sections 5 and 6 of the Debit Cards Law, all under the standing header "ONLY THE HEBREW VERSION IS BINDING". ¹² The practical rule for a newcomer reading Israeli material in English: treat the English page as a map and the Hebrew instrument as the territory, and check the date on both before you rely on a number.

How do you file the police complaint, and what does it produce?

Online through GovID, or in person at the station nearest your home. The Israel Police service page lists property and fraud offences among the categories a complaint can be filed under, alongside sex offences, family violence, threats and violence, and other offences. It states expressly that the online form does not constitute a formal complaint until police investigators complete the process, and that the report counts as giving information about an offence to a police officer within the meaning of section 243 of the Penal Law. It was last updated 29 July 2025.⁶

Now the newcomer layer, and here it is measurable rather than impressionistic. The English version of the same service was last updated 5 April 2021. It still frames online filing as a way to protect your health during the coronavirus crisis, and it does not list the offence categories at all, so an English-only reader cannot tell from it that fraud is covered.⁷ More than four years separate the two pages on the same government service. That gap, not any single mistranslation, is the thing to plan around.

Both language versions do agree on the immediate aftermath: an SMS and email update if you agreed to updates by electronic means, and an investigator contacting you if needed.⁶⁷ Only the Hebrew page adds that the investigator may summon you to the station to go through the complaint.⁶

Case tracking is a separate system, the Crime Victims Information System, known in Hebrew as מנ"ע. Victims can log in to see the case status, where the file sits and who is handling it, and information about suspects or defendants where there are any. The username and password are issued when the file is opened at the police station, case details generally appear within 24 hours of the file being opened, lost credentials are recovered through the station handling the complaint, and the information stays in the system up to two years after the case is closed.⁸ That page ties credential issuance to the file being opened at a station and says nothing about credentials for a complaint filed online, so if you file online, ask the investigator who contacts you how you will get into מנ"ע rather than waiting for a letter.

Later steps ask whether a complaint exists. Getting the reference and the credentials into your own notes on day one is cheaper than reconstructing them in month three.

How do you see, correct and block your Israeli credit file?

Through the Bank of Israel, which runs the register itself under the Credit Data Law 5776-2016.³ This is the first structural surprise for anyone arriving from an English-speaking country, and it changes what the right action is. Israel does have licensed private credit bureaus, and the same law is built around them, but they sit downstream: data reaches a bureau from the Bank of Israel's register, and the bureau prepares the report a lender reads.³ The free annual report, the correction application and both of the blocks described below are the Bank of Israel's to give. There is no private bureau to write to for any of them.

The early-warning signal is worth knowing exists. Credit data may only pass from the register to a credit bureau, and from the bureau to a lender, where you gave express consent for that specific credit transaction.³ And a lender that received a credit report in order to enter into a credit transaction with you must notify you immediately and tell you which credit bureau it got the report from.³ An unexpected "we pulled your credit report" notice is how identity theft in Israel usually announces itself, and it arrives by law rather than by courtesy.

To read the file, you are entitled to a data-concentration report from the Bank of Israel, free of charge on request once a year, with additional reports in the same year supplied for a fee, and the Bank of Israel must tell customers about that right once a year.³ The report must state, among other things, the requests credit bureaus made to the Bank of Israel for your data, which is the audit trail showing who went looking.³ It is issued in Hebrew or Arabic, and in Hebrew if you do not ask for a language.³ Budget for a translator or a Hebrew-reading friend at the point of reading, not at the point of requesting.

To correct a fraudulent entry, you apply to the Bank of Israel to delete, complete or correct the information.³ Where the Bank considers an inquiry is needed, it marks in the register that an inquiry is under way on that item and refers the matter to the information source, which must return the results as soon as possible and at the latest within seven days unless the Supervisor set a different period. If the source misses that deadline, the Supervisor instructs the register manager on what to do with the information, so a bank that simply stops answering does not freeze your file in place.³ Where a dispute arises between the source and you over an item, the Bank of Israel may record a comment in the register on the matter, or delete the disputed item.³ That comment-or-delete power is the realistic interim outcome while a fraud investigation is unresolved, and a reader who does not know it exists will assume a disputed entry simply sits there working against them.

Weight that differently than a lifelong Israeli would. Your Israeli file started empty on the day you landed and has a year or two of entries in it at most, so a single fraudulent default is not one bad line among two decades of good ones. It can be most of what a lender sees. That is an argument for pushing the correction and the comment through early rather than waiting to see whether it matters.

Then there are two different blocks, and confusing them is expensive for a newcomer specifically.

There is a trap in the right-hand column that catches people who used it as a shield. A non-payment datum arriving later does not merely suspend the right to ask for exclusion; where you had already exercised it, the register operator states that the exclusion is cancelled immediately, and the three-year clock ends only after three years in which no further datum of that kind arrives.⁵ The categories that trigger it come from insolvency proceedings, the Enforcement and Collection Authority, the Bank of Israel, and a customer debt at a bank, payment card issuer or information source where court proceedings were opened over it. The same page publishes shekel thresholds beside those categories and then says the displayed amounts are the ones set in the original 2017 regulations, that all amounts are index-linked annually with updates published in Reshumot, and that only the updated amounts govern. The categories are the usable part; the printed numbers are not.⁵

Which block you want turns on whether you expect to apply for Israeli credit in the next few years. How the register works in general, and how to build a file from a standing start, is a separate topic covered in the Israeli credit system. Why your home-country file and your Israeli file never talk to each other is covered in keeping a home-country credit card. This page uses that fact for one purpose only: if your identity was taken, the block belongs in both systems, because they are separate registers with separate rules.

If you are a US citizen or green-card holder, what else is exposed?

Your Social Security number, and it keeps working after aliyah. For a US citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income tax returns are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad, and you are subject to tax on worldwide income from all sources.²² A stolen SSN therefore keeps producing US consequences from an Israeli address.

Scope note first: this article covers accounts, cards and credit records only. It names no pooled investment vehicle, so PFIC does not arise here; US tax treatment of Israeli funds is covered separately in cleaning up a PFIC you already own.

The IRS's own recovery list for individuals is: stop interacting with the thief, update the IRS Online Account password, follow the instructions in any IRS letter or notice, report the identity theft, follow the recovery steps on IdentityTheft.gov, get an Identity Protection PIN to protect the tax account, keep records of letters, calls and emails, file returns and pay tax as usual, and check with your state tax agency for other steps.¹⁵ That last item is the one olim skip, and the state you left is exactly the party most likely to still think you live there. The same page also narrows one common instinct: most people do not need to file Form 14039, the Identity Theft Affidavit, and it says expressly not to file it where the identity theft is not tax-related.¹⁵ A drained Israeli bank account is not tax-related identity theft.

The IP PIN is the tool that actually stops someone filing a return on your SSN: a six-digit number that prevents someone else filing a tax return using your SSN or ITIN, available to anyone with an SSN or ITIN who can verify their identity, including people not required to file, valid for one calendar year with a new one generated each year.¹⁶

The decision that matters from Israel is not whether to get one but which door you use, because the three enrolment routes differ in how the PIN reaches you every year afterwards, and only one of them does not depend on a US mailing address. Through the IRS online account you retrieve the PIN yourself online each calendar year, and the IRS says a CP01A notice will not be mailed to you; the PIN is generally viewable in the account from mid-January to mid-November. Through Form 15227, open where adjusted gross income on the last filed return is below a published threshold, the IRS calls the telephone number on the form to validate your identity and then sends the PIN by US Postal Service, usually in four to six weeks, and you then receive it annually through the mail. Through in-person authentication at a local Taxpayer Assistance Center, with one federal or state issued picture ID plus one further form of identification, the PIN also arrives by US mail, usually within about three weeks, and again annually through the mail thereafter.¹⁶ Read as at 23 August 2026, that is the whole decision from Israel: the online route renews itself in a browser, the other two renew themselves into a US mailbox. One route is not yours to choose at all. Where the IRS enrols you itself because you are a confirmed victim of tax-related identity theft, it mails you a CP01A notice with the new PIN each year, so an oleh in that position needs a US address that reliably reaches them, or a way to view the PIN in the online account instead.¹⁶

The US freeze is built on the opposite principle from the Israeli one, and this is where olim most often go looking for the wrong thing. In the US, a credit freeze means nobody can open a new credit account in your name including you, there is no cost to place or lift one, it does not affect your credit score, anyone can place one at any time for any reason, and it lasts until you lift it; you place it by contacting all three of the nationwide credit bureaus.¹⁷ A fraud alert is the lighter, separate tool: it makes lenders verify your identity before granting new credit, it can sit alongside a freeze, and you place it by contacting one bureau, which must tell the other two.¹⁷ For someone doing this from a different time zone, that difference is the practical one: three contacts against one. An initial fraud alert lasts one year and anyone affected or suspecting they are affected can place one; an extended alert lasts seven years but requires an FTC identity theft report at IdentityTheft.gov or a police report, and the page does not say whether a police report filed outside the United States qualifies, so ask the bureau rather than assuming your Israeli complaint will do.¹⁷

One narrow reporting point, and no further. A US person must file FinCEN Form 114 to report a financial interest in, or signature or other authority over, at least one financial account outside the United States where the aggregate value exceeded $10,000 at any time during the calendar year reported, and whether the account produced taxable income has no bearing on whether it is a foreign financial account for FBAR purposes.¹⁸ Read as at 23 August 2026, the test is the highest aggregate value at any point in the year rather than the balance left at the end of it, so money stolen in November does not pull an account back under the threshold after the fact. The mechanics belong to the cross-border tax pages, not this one.

If you came from the UK, which regime covers which account?

Whichever regime governs the account the money left, and if you still hold a UK account you are sitting under two at once. Since 7 October 2024, reimbursement for Authorised Push Payment fraud is mandatory in the UK for payments made on or after that date. APP fraud there means being tricked into sending money to a fraudster by bank transfer, and all types are covered, including impersonation and romance scams.¹⁹

The UK protections apply to individuals, microenterprises and charities, across banks, building societies, e-money firms and smaller payment firms, with credit unions, municipal banks and national savings banks outside the arrangements. They cover UK bank transfers over Faster Payments or CHAPS; card, cash and cheque have their own separate protections. Reimbursement is not available where the customer was complicit or grossly negligent, with gross negligence described as a high bar that does not apply to vulnerable consumers. Report as soon as possible and within 13 months of making the payment, and expect to be asked either to report the details to the police yourself or to consent to your bank reporting on your behalf. Expect reimbursement within 5 business days of the claim, with firms able to stop the clock to gather information but required to reach an outcome within 35 business days. Read as at 23 August 2026, an optional excess of up to £100 may be applied by individual firms and cannot be applied to vulnerable consumers, the maximum claim is £85,000 with firms free to reimburse more, and above that the case can go to the Financial Ombudsman Service, whose compensation limit that page gives as £430,000.¹⁹

Both systems reimburse unauthorised use of an instrument. The UK went further and made reimbursement mandatory for payments the victim authorised themselves after being deceived. The Israeli refund duty is keyed to misuse, which the statute defines as use by someone not entitled under the payment services contract.¹ Two labelled regimes, two different triggers, and no ranking implied. For context on where Israel is heading rather than where it has arrived: on 25 September 2024 the Supervisor of Banks, the Director General of the Ministry of Communications and the Israel Police's Head of Investigations and Intelligence established a dedicated multisector working team to reduce financial fraud, with a steering committee meeting quarterly, and the announcement described the work as requiring the removal of legislative, regulatory and technological barriers. The same announcement notes that fraud is directed at all customers but with a noted focus on people with low financial and digital awareness.²⁰ That is a statement of intent about barriers. It is not a reimbursement scheme, and nothing published says one is coming.

No US column belongs in that table. This page read the US identity-theft tools, the freeze, the fraud alert and the IP PIN, and did not read the US rules on bank liability for an unauthorised transfer, so there is nothing here to put beside the Israeli and UK triggers. Treat that as a gap in this page, not as a finding about US law.

If you came from anywhere else, does any of this change?

The Israeli half does not. Whatever passport you hold, the Israeli account, the Israeli card and the Israeli credit register run on the Payment Services Law and the Credit Data Law described above.¹³ What changes is the second half: whether a home-country reporting duty survives your move, and what recovery route exists there, is a separate question for each origin. The US and UK layers are set out above because those two regimes were read for this page. Canadian, South African, French and Australian recovery routes were not, so nothing here should be read across to them; check with the relevant home-country authority rather than assuming the UK or US pattern applies.

What if your teudat zehut itself was taken?

You replace it in person at a Population and Immigration Authority bureau. The published process is: book an appointment, pay the fee (paying online in advance is recommended on the page), attend the bureau with the required documents, and receive the new card by registered mail with a personal delivery code. The documents listed are an Israeli passport, described as mandatory in the case of loss or theft, the previous teudat zehut if it exists, and an identifying document with a clear photograph. That page was published 11 February 2025 and updated 10 April 2025.¹⁴

Read that document list again as a recent arrival. An Israeli passport is exactly the thing you may not hold yet, and the page itself does not describe what is accepted instead. Confirm with the bureau before you book, rather than turning up and finding out. The reason a copy of the card is worth stealing at all is structural: the Credit Data Law defines an identifying detail as first name, surname, identity number, and any other information that can directly or indirectly identify a particular customer, so your identity number is the field the whole register is keyed on.³

What if the bank stonewalls you?

There is a published escalation ladder, and Meidahon covers it in full in the banking ombudsman and disputing fees; the short version is the bank's internal ombudsman, then the Bank of Israel's Consumer Enquiries and Inspections Unit, whose stated function is to receive complaints from customers of banks and credit card companies, resolve disputes, and instruct them to correct deficiencies found during investigation.⁹ Two routing details from that unit's own page are worth carrying. It publishes separate paths for "I complained to the bank and have not yet received a response from them" and "I received an answer from the bank and I would like to appeal it", so which one you pick depends on whether an answer exists. And it routes enquiries about credit data reports elsewhere, which means a problem with your credit file is not a banking complaint.⁹

The Bank of Israel's own fraud warning adds a routing detail a newcomer would never guess: if you fear you have fallen victim, contact the bank's security office or its ombudsman as soon as possible, and escalate to the Banking Supervision Department if you get no response or an unsatisfactory one.¹¹ "The bank's security office" is not a department most people know to ask for by name. That warning is also published in English, Arabic, Russian and Amharic alongside Hebrew, which is worth knowing when you are deciding which Israeli material is safe to read in translation and which is not.¹¹

Keep the two clocks separate, because banks sometimes do not. Directive 308A sets the maximum time for a final answer to any complaint at 45 days from the date the complaint was received, extendable by 15 days by the bank's Ombudsman in extenuating circumstances, and it does not apply in very extenuating circumstances where the delay results from factors outside the bank's control. Notice of any extension and the reason for it must be sent to you before the original deadline runs out, and the bank must respond to the Banking Supervision Department within 21 days of its enquiry.¹⁰ The same directive requires a final response to tell you that you are entitled to appeal the bank's decision to the Supervisor of Banks, so if you can only read one sentence of a Hebrew reply, that is the sentence to have translated.¹⁰ All of that is the complaint clock. The refund clock is eight business days from your fraud notice, and it runs independently.¹ A bank that answers a fraud notice with a 45-day complaint timeline has conflated two different deadlines, and now you can name both.

Where this page stops

This is the recovery side only. The pitches themselves, how olim get targeted, the ownership check on a rental listing, the licence check on someone offering investment advice, the impersonation-call tells and the "unlock your oleh benefits" fee, are covered in scams targeting new olim, which is also where the phishing reporting line lives. Whether holding a debit card changes your position is covered in choosing a debit card. Protecting an older family member who may not be able to act for themselves is covered in elder olim financial protection. Setting up the account and the app in the first place is in opening a bank account and digital banking, and what a thin file does to a big purchase is in buying a car with no Israeli credit file.

Read scams targeting new olim next, and complete your GovID enrolment before you need it rather than on the day you do.

Frequently asked questions

If money has already moved, your first act is notice to the bank or card issuer, not a complaint. Israel's Payment Services Law 5779-2019 makes that notice start an eight-business-day refund clock and cap what you owe for earlier misuse. The police complaint and your Bank of Israel credit file come after.