The Israeli Private Eye at the Heart of a Climate Hacking Scandal
This article is based on decades of court documents, business filings and interviews. Karen Zraick reported from New York City and Gabby Sobelman from Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
For decades, an Israeli private investigator named Amit Forlit has operated on the edges of international intrigue while rubbing elbows with powerful figures.
Mr. Forlit claims to have served in Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency. He dated a prominent Israeli businesswoman and social-media figure who photographed him at exclusive parties. And he may or may not have inspired a hacker-for-hire character in a 2022 novel about murky financial shenanigans involving Argentine debt.
These were mostly bit parts in other people’s dramas. Until now.
Today Mr. Forlit, wearing an ankle monitor while remaining in the New York City area, awaits trial in a globe-spanning hacking case where he is the central character. Prosecutors with the Justice Department have charged him with overseeing an operation that aimed to discredit American environmentalists, allegedly on behalf of a huge oil company. He has pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Forlit could face decades in prison.
The charges, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, allege a “sprawling criminal enterprise” in which Mr. Forlit and his associates hired hackers in India to gain unauthorized access to the environmentalists’ private email accounts. Mr. Forlit’s lawyers have identified the oil company described in the allegations as Exxon Mobil, and the commissioning firm as DCI Group, a Washington public relations and lobbying firm.
Exxon and DCI have denied any role.
In a statement, Exxon said the company had “not been involved in, nor are we aware of, any hacking activities. If there was any hacking involved, we condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
A spokesman for DCI, Craig Stevens, said the Justice Department had confirmed to DCI’s lawyers that it was “not investigating our firm or any of our employees” last year. “We direct all our employees and consultants to comply with the law, and allegations of DCI Group’s involvement with this activity, alleged to have occurred more than a decade ago, are false and unsubstantiated,” he said.
Federal Court in Manhattan. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
The case puts Mr. Forlit at the center of some of the most consequential legal battles the fossil fuel industry has faced. Dozens of states and cities are suing oil companies, including Exxon, claiming among other things that the industry misled Americans for decades about the climate and health damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels. If successful, the claims could cost the industry billions of dollars.
Prosecutors allege Mr. Forlit was part of an effort to stymie or kill these court cases.
Mr. Forlit, 58, was extradited to New York City from London this year. At a hearing in April in a Lower Manhattan courthouse, he cut an unassuming figure: tall with close-cropped, graying hair, wearing a short-sleeved blue button-down and spectacles. He ducked down to confer with his lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, who had recently made headlines for winning the acquittal of a man for throwing a sandwich at a federal officer in Washington.