Hm, let me try to make sense of that all. As far as I understand it, you have been conned in a pretty classical manner. But I must say I haven’t quite understood completely what is going on. I especially don’t understand the business with the checks, why they should not be cancelled and what this agency wants you to do with them. It is also not clear to me if you owe them anything and if, how much and what has actually been paid.

Now to the police. The role of the police is different to what most people assume. They are to investigate crimes against society but not necessarily prosecute every wrongdoer in the country. At the bottom of your matter there could be two different victims: you as an individual and society as a whole. You as an individual will not be helped by the police. Your recourse is the civil court system were there are remedies for breach of contract, fraudulent tort, unjust enrichment etc. It is up to the individual victim to file a lawsuit and obtain remedies such as getting the money back.

The job of the police is to investigate if there is a crime against society. There could very well be one in this case, since fraud or larceny are considered a crime in most countries. However, the decision to prosecute that or not is left to the public prosecutor or the police. And given the scarce resources they usually have, in many cases they decline to prosecute or investigate. The victim cannot do anything about that.

Here in the States nowadays there often is a third way, and you might want to look into this if there is something comparable in Israel: so called “consumer fraud” often is investigated and prosecuted by “consumer affairs departments” of big cities or by the Attorney General’s offices of states. Again it is up to their discretion, but they often will prosecute where the regular prosecutor’s office, in the States that is usually called the District Attorney’s office, will not. They also will have different remedies at their disposal, such as revoking the business license of the offending business.

And that would be the fourth way here in the States. Realtors here need to be licensed and such a business practice could lead to revocation of their license. One would have to file a complaint with whatever agency is responsible for issuing their business licenses.

Mind one thing: Of all these different approaches only the first, the civil lawsuit, can normally lead to the victim recovering the money damages she had.

I know that in some European countries there even is a government subsidy available for obtaining legal counsel, may be Israel has something like this, too. If, then it might be good idea to consult an attorney and see if you could file a lawsuit against these people.

Now, as to the harassment, this is very much depending on local laws. Here in the States their behavior probably would be a crime so the police would have to take a report, and one could also possibly obtain a civil legal remedy against them by getting an injunction. I don’t know if this is possible in Israel.

Now, what it comes down to is this: it is often an error to assume that such a problem will be solved just by turning to the police. As far as I understand it, this is rather a problem made for the civil court system. A civil court is the place to sort out the competing claims. The police cannot do that. And it is interesting, in my opinion, that this agency has not yet filed a lawsuit against you, since they claim you owe them money. To me this smacks of them being pretty sure they would lose it.

Ah, now I understand the situation a lot better. The cash deal of course was a classic con, the money is gone and there never will be any proof that you paid it.

However, there are a couple of other things that might deserve consideration. First is to look at what kind of contract between you and them actually was made. The point is here that they might have a legitimate claim if it was them who came up with the apartment. I don’t know how the law in Israel is, but if you would sign a contract (or otherwise enter into it) that merely says “I will pay you for showing me (pointing me towards) an apartment that is for rent” and they actually did that, it would not matter if they were hired by the landlord to find renters or not. Unless that would be explicitly outlawed, they might have a legitimate claim.

What strikes me as strange is that there is supposed to be an irrebuttable presumption that once you write a check to someone you did owe that amount to the recipient. I actually cannot imagine that this correctly reflects the law. It might create a presumption, yes, but I would expect it to be rebuttable, that means that yes, on its face it creates the impression that you owed that amount to that recipient, because you wrote the check, but if you then have valid reasons why in fact you did not owe that amount, you should be able to present that in court and prevail with a claim of restitution. This is basically how things would turn out in American law and as far as I know also in continental European law. May be you should inquire from an attorney if things really are so much different in Israel.

What I still don’t quite understand is why they don’t cash in the other checks you gave them, instead of bugging you to write new ones.

In the matter of the check cashed by Mr. Jacob it might be tricky to trace that money to them, however, the bank should be able to help at least somehow.

As far as I understand it now there has been cash paid, that is probably gone forever. One check has been cashed by an individual who cannot be found and who the realtors claim they don’t know. To get that money back might turn out very tricky or simply too expensive.
Then there are other checks which are now in possession of the real estate brokers but which they haven’t cashed yet. They want you to cancel them and write new ones? That doesn’t make any sense to me. If they would cash the new ones then, their claims would have been paid. How could they cause a problem about the cancelled checks? Probably this is where specific Israeli law comes into play of which I have no clue.
But the whole thing sounds so fishy to me that it might be worth spending a few bucks to consult with an attorney to find out what your legal position really is and if you can go after them for your money.

As to the police, yes, basically this is the way I know from Germany. My bike had been stolen once and my car had been broken into once while I lived there and they told me pretty bluntly that they would not bother to do anything about it in both cases. These kind of crimes are not taken seriously there and that’s why they happen so often. Israel sounds the same.