On May 2, 2024, a customer of Mizrahi Tefahot Leasing sent a WhatsApp message to a representative of the law firm Chen Fisher Gabbay, which was handling collection on the company's behalf. He had been abroad since November 2023. He sent a copy of his passport, gave an email address, and wrote that he wanted "to close the debt and sell the car". He also wrote that he no longer lived at the registered address, and explained why he was sending the passport: "so that there will be no services I don't know about in the file".
A week later the representative sent him the amount of the debt, and wrote: "Let me know how long it will take you to sell the car".
On June 10, 2024, five weeks after that exchange, Yaniv Perlov, an employee of Bank Mizrahi Tefahot, signed an affidavit. The affidavit stated that the creditor's representatives had tried to contact the debtor several times, and that "the debtor preferred not to respond to the representatives' approaches". It also stated that there was a "concern that once the debtor learns of the creditor's wish to seize the vehicle, he will hurry and make it disappear".
On June 25, 2024, attorney Victor Fisher, of the Chen Fisher Gabbay firm, filed an "Urgent request for the appointment of a receiver to seize a pledged vehicle before sending a warning, ex parte", and attached the affidavit. On July 1, 2024, Victor Fisher himself was appointed receiver over the vehicle. From that day on he acted in two roles: counsel for the creditor, and an officeholder acting on behalf of the execution registrar.
The customer did not know about this. He was abroad, and the proceeding went ahead without him. This was the first stop in a chain of debt collection proceedings that lasted more than two years, in two execution files: pledge enforcement file 515509-06-24 and bill file 506468-12-24. In both, the creditor is Mizrahi Tefahot Leasing, and in both it is represented by the Chen Fisher Gabbay firm.
This chain is set out in a complaint dated October 14, 2026 to the district ethics committee of the Israel Bar Association, Central District, against attorney Victor Fisher. The complaint asks the committee to file a disciplinary complaint against him. The article below relies on the complaint and on the 20 exhibits attached to it: decisions, transcripts, certificates of service, affidavits and correspondence.
In brief
- The customer asked in writing to close the debt and sell the car. Five weeks later an affidavit stated that he "preferred not to respond".
- On the basis of the affidavit, attorney Victor Fisher was appointed receiver, ex parte and before any warning was sent.
- Twice it was reported that the customer had received a warning in Israel and "refused to sign", while he was abroad. Both services were cancelled by decisions.
- An attorney fee of ILS 21,456.50 was cancelled in one file, and appeared in the same amount in the debt balance in the second file.
- An order to bring the customer was requested on the basis of a certificate of service stating that no one was at home and the decision was posted on the door. The proceeding was cancelled.
- On October 14, 2026, a complaint against attorney Victor Fisher was prepared for the ethics committee of the Israel Bar Association. The committee has not yet decided on it.
Ex parte debt collection proceedings: what the affidavit said, and what the documents say
In a proceeding conducted ex parte, the affidavit is almost all the registrar sees. That is why every sentence in it matters. Yaniv Perlov's affidavit contains three sentences that the collection firm's own documents present differently.
The first: "I am an employee of Mizrahi Tefahot Leasing Ltd.". At the hearing on January 13, 2026, Perlov was asked whether he is an employee of Bank Mizrahi Tefahot, and answered: "Yes. It is a subsidiary".
The second: "the debtor preferred not to respond to the representatives' approaches". According to the complaint, the contact log attached to the affidavit ends on April 1, 2024, and consists mostly of entries such as "call attempt no answer sent debt text message" from February and March 2024, when the customer was abroad. The WhatsApp exchange of May 2024, in which the customer replied the same day and asked to close the debt, was not mentioned in the affidavit.
The third: the concern that the customer "will hurry and make it disappear", meaning the car. In that same exchange, the firm's representative asked the customer how long it would take him to sell the car.
At the bottom of the affidavit, attorney Victor Fisher certified: "On 10/06/24 Yaniv Perlov appeared before me ... and signed it before me". At the hearing on January 13, 2026, Perlov was asked where he had signed the affidavit, and answered: "At my office. We do electronic signature verification". The complaint argues that the certification is not in the wording set by the National Ethics Committee for remote certification, which requires a video conference and the presentation of an identity document.
The court saw the matter differently. In a request for leave to appeal that was dismissed on February 9, 2026, it was held: "Even if there was a defect in the affidavit, once the respondent's affiant was warned at the hearing held before the Honourable Registrar, this defect was cured". The complaint argues that curing the defect as evidence does not answer the professional question, whether a lawyer may certify that a person signed before him when that person testifies that he signed at his own office.
The services: twice "refused to sign", twice cancelled
Debt collection proceedings in execution begin with the service of a warning on the debtor. From the date of service, the days for filing an objection are counted, default interest accrues, and attachments and restrictions may be requested. That is why service is the key point of the entire file.
On December 22, 2024, the process server Naamneh Salameh reported that he had served the warning in the bill file on the customer personally, at an address the customer had stated in writing that he had left, and that the customer "refused to sign". Twelve days earlier the customer had written to the firm: "I have been abroad since November 2023". On the basis of this service, late charges were added, an attorney fee was added to the debt, an attachment was imposed, orders to provide information were issued, and finally restrictions were imposed, among them a ban on leaving the country. We covered this chapter in detail in the article on the exit ban.
On April 21, 2025, the same process server reported another service, in the pledge file, again with "refused to sign". The place of service was given only as the name of the town, with no street and no house number. Six weeks earlier, according to the information orders report, the creditor had received from the Population Registry the record of the customer's departures and entries, which showed that he was abroad.
Both services were cancelled. On October 21, 2025, the registrar in the bill file found that on the date of service the customer had been outside Israel, and cancelled all the proceedings and restrictions in the file as well as the attorney fee. On January 13, 2026, the registrar in the pledge file found: "The debtor was outside the borders of Israel on 21.04.2025", and cancelled the date of service.
In a response filed on behalf of the creditor on October 19, 2025, before the first cancellation, attorney Dotan Tzur of the Chen Fisher Gabbay firm wrote that it was not impossible that the process server "had another person sign who identified himself to him as the debtor himself". The complaint argues that after this response, and after the decision of October 21, 2025, attorney Victor Fisher continued to rely on the service by the same process server in the second file.
Stage B attorney fee in Israeli debt enforcement: the amount that was cancelled and came back
On January 29, 2025, a week after the first service was recorded in the bill file, a "principal attorney fee" of ILS 21,456.50 was added to the debt in that file. On October 21, 2025, the registrar cancelled this attorney fee, together with all the proceedings in the file.
On July 16, 2026, two years after the receiver was appointed, the registrar in the pledge file ordered the receiver to file "for the debtor's review, an up-to-date printout of the debtor's debt balance to the creditor". The receiver filed a ledger statement dated July 22, 2026. In its last line exactly the same amount, ILS 21,456.50, was added to the debt under the label "attorney fee B", with no reference to a file or a decision. The balance rose from ILS 179,627.58 to ILS 201,084.08.
Attached to the receiver's report was an affidavit by attorney Victor Fisher, stating that "all the details set out in the attached report have been checked and to the best of my knowledge and understanding are correct". According to the complaint, the affidavit was certified on June 8, 2026, before the ledger statement and the report were prepared.
On August 16, 2026, the registrar wrote that the balance "includes an attorney fee B component, even though this component was seemingly cancelled in the other proceeding", and ordered the creditor to explain "the reason for leaving this component in the claimed debt balance".
An order to bring the debtor in Israeli debt enforcement, based on a document posted on a door
On November 30, 2025, the receiver asked that the customer be summoned for examination, claiming that he "firmly refuses to give any information regarding the vehicle". On December 1, 2025, the registrar decided, relying on the fact that "a warning was served on the debtor on 21.04.2025", that the customer must hand over the car or give details of its location. She ordered that the receiver serve the decision on the debtor "by personal service", and that if the details were not provided "within 48 hours of the date on which a copy of this decision is served on the debtor, summoning the debtor for examination by an order to bring will be considered".
The process server Ofek Ozen recorded three visits, on December 2, 3 and 7, 2025, "and no one was at home", and wrote: "Since no one was found at home on the third visit, I posted the document on the door of his apartment". On the same form, both "delivered to the debtor" and "posted on the door after 3 visits" were ticked. According to the complaint, the process server received the address from the firm, and the person living at the property told him that the customer did not live there.
On December 17, 2025, attorney Victor Fisher filed a request for an order to bring: "The debtor did not act in accordance with the decision of 01/12/2025 ... the certificate of service is attached". On December 21, 2025, the registrar granted the request, "in view of ... the attachment of proof of service of the decision of 1.12.2025 on the debtor". An order to bring proceeding was opened against the customer, and a deposit voucher of ILS 5,000 was issued. On December 24, 2025, following a request by the customer, the registrar clarified that "no order to bring has yet been issued in the file", and on January 24, 2026 the proceeding was cancelled.
At the hearing on January 13, 2026, attorney Dotan Tzur said, on behalf of the receiver: "A person who breaches an order to hand over a vehicle and does not hand it over is an offender who breaches a judicial order and commits an offence". He asked that the Contempt of Court Ordinance be invoked against the customer. "The order" was the decision of December 1, 2025, which had been posted on the door. On that same day the registrar cancelled the warning date of April 21, 2025, on which that decision had relied.
What the registrars and the court decided against the customer
Not all the decisions were in the customer's favour, and the complaint itself sets them out. On January 13, 2026, his request to stay the proceedings was rejected. It was held that "contradictions arose in the debtor's claims", and since he refused to disclose the location of the car, "there is no escaping the conclusion that the debtor is concealing the pledged asset". He was ordered to pay recurring costs of ILS 100 per day. The registrar recorded in the decision his argument that the decision of December 1, 2025 had not been served on him, but did not rule on it.
The request for leave to appeal that he filed was dismissed on February 9, 2026. His objection to the enforcement of the bill was rejected on May 31, 2026. On August 16, 2026, it was held that the obligation to deposit the car is not conditional on clarifying the accounts. These decisions deal with the debt, with the right to enforce the pledge and with the admissibility of the affidavit. They do not deal with the question before the ethics committee: whether a lawyer may report to the registrar services that his own firm's documents contradict.
A complaint against a lawyer with the Israel Bar Association: what is being requested
The complaint asks the ethics committee to file a disciplinary complaint against attorney Victor Fisher with the disciplinary tribunal, under section 63 of the Israel Bar Association Law. According to the complaint, the acts breach, among other things, rule 34(a) of the Rules of Professional Conduct, which prohibits a lawyer from making a factual claim knowing it to be untrue, and the decision of the National Ethics Committee under which lawyers in the collection field must ensure that "services carried out on behalf of the firm are carried out in accordance with the law". The complaint asks that the firm be required to produce the work orders given to the process servers and the source of the address given to them.
The complaint does not ask the committee to rule on the debt itself. According to the complaint, separate complaints are being filed in parallel against other lawyers at the firm. The ethics committee has not yet decided whether to file a disciplinary complaint, and until it decides, these are the complainant's allegations.
What this article does not determine
This article does not determine that anyone acted intentionally, and does not determine who knew what within the Chen Fisher Gabbay firm or at Bank Mizrahi Tefahot. It presents what was written in the documents and what was decided. These documents show that during the same period in which the customer stated in writing that he was abroad and that he wanted to close the debt, requests were filed against him that presented him as someone who was evading, disappearing and breaching an order, and that part of the basis for those requests was later cancelled by decisions.
Questions for Bank Mizrahi Tefahot, Mizrahi Tefahot Leasing and the Chen Fisher Gabbay firm
- Why did the affidavit of June 10, 2024 not mention the WhatsApp exchange in which the customer asked to close the debt and sell the car?
- What is the source of the address given to the process servers, and what was done with the customer's messages stating that he did not live there and that he was abroad?
- Why did the debt balance in the pledge file include an attorney fee of ILS 21,456.50 that had been cancelled in the bill file?
- On the basis of what document was it certified in 2024 that the bank employee "is an authorised signatory of the creditor"?
This article is based on the complaint dated October 14, 2026 to the district ethics committee of the Israel Bar Association and on its exhibits: the customer's correspondence with the Chen Fisher Gabbay firm, the affidavit of Yaniv Perlov, the transcript of the hearing of January 13, 2026, the certificates of service and the process servers' affidavits, the registrars' decisions, the debt ledger statement and the judgment in the request for leave to appeal. The site will publish the response of Bank Mizrahi Tefahot, Mizrahi Tefahot Leasing and the Chen Fisher Gabbay firm, if received.
Frequently asked questions about debt collection proceedings in Israel
What is the ex parte appointment of a receiver?
It is a request that the creditor files with the execution registrar without the debtor knowing about it and without the debtor responding to it. In the file described in this article, the title of the request was "Urgent request for the appointment of a receiver to seize a pledged vehicle before sending a warning, ex parte". Since the other side does not hear about it, the registrar relies mainly on the affidavit attached to the request.
What can you do when you discover that an amount already cancelled has been added to the debt?
You ask the execution registrar to order the creditor to file a full breakdown of the debt balance and to explain every component. In the file described in this article, the registrar ordered the creditor to explain why the balance included an attorney fee component that had "seemingly" been cancelled in another file.
When is an order to bring the debtor (bench warrant) issued in Israeli debt enforcement?
An order to bring is an order directing that the debtor be brought before the registrar, by force if necessary. In the file described in this article, the receiver requested an order to bring on the grounds that the debtor had not complied with a decision served on him, and attached a certificate of service. According to that certificate, no one was at home and the decision was posted on the door. The order to bring proceeding was cancelled about a month later.
How do you file a complaint against a lawyer with the Israel Bar Association?
According to the Israel Bar Association's complaint form, a complaint against a lawyer is filed with the district ethics committee in the district where the lawyer's office is located, on the official form. The details of the complaint must be verified by an affidavit signed and certified by a lawyer, and copies must be sent according to the number of lawyers complained against, plus one additional copy for the committee. Material of up to 20 pages may also be sent by fax or by email.