Greek court imprisons Tal Dilian over spyware scandal | The Jerusalem Post

JAMES GENN

A Greek court sentenced former IDF intelligence officer and spyware CEO Tal Dilian and his partner, Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou, to a prison sentence, N12 News reported on Thursday.

The two Israelis were sentenced along with two Greek businessmen, for a total cumulative sentence of 126 years and eight months, according to the report.

However, they are expected to serve only eight years, as that is the typical upper limit for misdemeanours, a BBC report noted.

The four were convicted for "violating the confidentiality of telephone communications, disrupting a personal data registration on a recurring basis, and illegal access to an information system or data," N12's report stated.

The convicts were linked with the utilization of a surveillance software called Predator to monitor 87 people, including government ministers, senior military officials, and journalists, the BBC reported.

According to the BBC, the software can access a device's messages, camera, and microphone.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who directly oversees the Greek intelligence service EYP, called the incident a "scandal."

Biden administration sanctions Dilian, spyware company

In March 2024, the then-Biden administration's State Department formally sanctioned Dilian and his Athens-based spyware firm Intellexa, as well as other related entities.

This followed on from previous moves by that administration to blacklist Israeli cyber offense companies from doing business in the US, including a Commerce Department blacklist in 2021, to which Intellexa was added in July 2023.

However, the March 2024 sanctions against Dilian, Hamou, and their entities were far more severe than the ramifications of the Commerce Department's blacklist.

Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.