Eliad Cohen

Eliad Cohen, an Israeli producer and model whose photos are stolen by scammers

Eliad Cohen was born in 1988 in Acre, Israel. After serving in an elite combat unit of the Israel Defense Forces, he moved to Tel Aviv, where he worked as a bartender and model before turning to event production and tourism.

The PAPA Party and Gay-ville

He is the founder of the PAPA Party, launched in Tel Aviv in association with Tel Aviv Gay Pride. Since 2012, the concept has been exported, with events in American, Canadian, European and Latin American cities.

He also co-founded Gay-ville, a gay-friendly vacation and apartment rental network based in Tel Aviv.

A well-known face, and a target for identity theft

With about 1.5 million followers on Instagram, Eliad Cohen is well known in gay circles, much less so elsewhere. Scammers take advantage of this: they copy photos from his public profiles to create fake accounts on dating sites and social networks. This practice is called catfishing.

• Reverse image search: tools like Google Lens or TinEye show where a profile photo already appears on the internet.
• Verified accounts: if someone famous seems to contact you, check whether the account is the verified one, on several platforms.

Avoiding the romance scam trap

The scam using his photos follows a predictable pattern. Scammers rely on the ‘halo effect’, the bias that makes us assume an attractive person is also trustworthy. They build a rapport, create an emotional bond, then invent a sudden crisis that requires money.

If a contact met online asks you for financial help, stop immediately. Treat every request for a wire transfer, gift cards or cryptocurrency as an attempt at fraud, however convincing the photos may be. See also our page on romance scams and the photos used by scammers.