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The first two weeks of March have seen a surge in violent attacks and acts of intimidation targeting synagogues and Jewish institutions across North America and Europe. 

More than five years after Myanmar’s military coup, international resolve to hold the junta accountable must not weaken, an independent human rights expert warned on Friday, as escalating violence and growing humanitarian needs push millions of civilians deeper into crisis.

In a solidarity visit to the war-ravaged capital of Lebanon, the UN chief on Friday announced a flash humanitarian appeal of $308.3 million to support civilians there, after ongoing Israeli strikes countering rocket launches from Hezbollah left around 816,000 Lebanese internally displaced, a figure that looks set to rise.

As the UN Secretary-General touched down in Beirut on Friday in solidarity with the people of Lebanon, UN agencies highlighted the dangers for civilians and particularly pregnant women and migrant workers, amid ongoing airstrikes and rocket fire between Hezbollah fighters and Israel. 

In a sign that prosecutors in Germany’s Bamberg region are ramping up efforts to fight cybercrime, a court has begun hearing its second case involving a person accused of providing software allegedly designed to facilitate fake investment scams.

While legal action has most often targeted people running cyberfraud operations, Bavaria’s Bamberg Regional Court this month began another trial of someone who ran a company that allegedly enabled scammers.

Opening arguments began on March 2 in the trial of a man identified only as “Shay B.” To protect privacy, full names are typically not disclosed to media in German trials. He is charged with four counts of commercial and organized fraud for his work as CEO of Israel-based company Airsoft from March 2015 until at least the end of June 2021.

Shay B’s indictment alleges that as CEO of Airsoft, he “knowingly and willingly” provided the fake “brokerage all-in-one solution” software “central to the fraud” committed by criminal groups across multiple countries. By taking a cut of the scammers’ revenue, prosecutors argue, the CEO became directly complicit in their schemes.

Shay B’s lawyers told OCCRP that the case raised fundamental legal questions about the criminal liability of software providers and “may therefore carry significant implications for the technology industry as a whole.”

“The central question before the court is at what point, and under what legal conditions, a software provider may be held criminally liable for the misuse of its product by third parties,” his lawyers said in a written statement.

In their opening arguments, prosecutors from Bavaria’s Central Office for Cybercrime emphasized the scope of the case by taking nearly two hours to read out a list of individual victims. Their financial losses altogether totalled more than 94 million euros (roughly $108 million).

The Bamberg Public Prosecutor’s Office indictment, which has been acquired by OCCRP, alleges that Airsoft did more than simply provide software to scam operators, saying: “In some cases — depending on the respective authorizations — the involvement of Airsoft employees was required, which did indeed occur.”

Airsoft was deployed across a network of fake trading platforms, including Huludox, Fibonetix, Nobeltrade, Tradecapital, and Forbslab, the indictment says. The ring leaders of those platforms were convicted by the Bamberg court in 2025 of conducting scams from call centers in several countries, including Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Israel, and Kosovo.

A press officer at the Bamberg court told OCCRP that Shay B has “partially admitted” the facts of the case to authorities, however “the allegation that the criminal nature of the actions was known is largely denied.”

It is the Bamberg Regional Court’s second trial this year of a person accused of making a key contribution to fake trading platforms by providing them with ready-to-use software designed to deceive investors.

In February, it heard a similar case against Israeli-Georgian citizen Mikheil Biniashvili. He confessed to running his own fraudulent call-center operation in Albania, but was also tried for providing scam software to criminal groups.

According to the indictment against Biniashvili, he provided the Puma Trading System (Puma TS) software deployed by 397 different “scam brand” platforms. 

A former member of the Milton Group fraudulent call center network, which was first exposed by OCCRP, Biniashvili was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison in a plea deal for his role in scamming victims out of approximately $150 million. 

Biniashvili was found to be fully aware that his clients were running scams and took a direct cut of their illicit profits. Also similar to Airsoft, prosecutors described Puma TS as an “all-in-one service” for simulating non-existent trading activity on fraudulent platforms. 

Yaniv Hanoch, a professor of decision science at the University of Wolverhampton, welcomed the trials against software providers, saying it is “a great idea to go after the [alleged] enablers.”

“Since it is difficult to catch the actual scammers, disrupting the process is an excellent idea and sends a message to others. As there are many players in the process, anything that can put a dent in the process is welcome,” said Hanoch, who studies the growing cyberscam sector.

Proceedings in Shay B’s case are expected to conclude this month, with a verdict soon to follow.