In the past few years, check-cashing scams and other ruses have become a real plague on the community. Every few months, the ultra-Orthodox press reports on some ultra-Orthodox con man or another who allegedly bilked yeshiva students out of tens of millions of shekels and fled, leaving young couples and families with children penniless and burdened with debt. The scams themselves straddled the border between speculative and irresponsible investments and malicious con jobs devised to rob investors of their money.

The latest such story to send shock waves through the ultra-Orthodox community took place over the past few months in the ultra-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak, when Yaakov Domb, the owner of a check-cashing business, lost tens of millions of shekels that individuals and institutions in the ultra-Orthodox community invested with him. He then disappeared without a trace.

About a year ago, Yisrael Wertheimer, a well-known money changer in the ultra-Orthodox community of Beitar Illit, allegedly amassed some 70 million shekels ($18 million) from yeshiva students and young families and fled the country with it. Another case that received considerable attention over the past few years took place in the United States, where an ultra-Orthodox developer and con artist named Eli Weinstein reportedly bilked ultra-Orthodox families in Israel and around the world out of $200 million. That was just one of dozens of cases of fraud, though most of the other cases are smaller, amounting to a few million shekels each.

This is more or less how it works: There’s a familiar phenomenon in Israel known as “end of the month plus,” which refers to delayed payments for goods and services that have already been provided. It can often take four months or more from the date the service was provided for payment to actually be made.