XContest bans pilot for faking tracklogs

A pilot who uploaded false tracklogs to XContest for more than three years has said he is “deeply ashamed” after being exposed.

Eliya Zemmour, 42, originally from Israel, uploaded the fake flights to enhance his personal pilot profile.

Following the revelation Eliya said he was “drowning in shame” and blamed ongoing longstanding personal issues for his actions.

In a statement sent to the organisers of XContest at the end of last week, after the fraud had come to light, Eliya requested that his account be closed and the data deleted: “I have decided to step away from public paragliding activity and no longer wish to maintain any presence on XContest.”

XContest is an international online cross-country contest where recreational pilots can log their flights. It is purely for fun and there is no reward system beyond gaining the recognition of peers. The site is used by 30-35,000 pilots around the world each year and, like most amateur online sports performance leagues, relies on the people who use it to play fair.

While tampering with single tracklogs is not unheard of, this is the first known example of a pilot faking significant flights over a long period of time on XContest.

Explaining how the flights had come to light, Jakub Havel, one of the developers behind XContest, said they had been notified by another XContest user who had been researching flights from Roldanillo, Colombia. That pilot found “surprising similarities” between some of Eliya’s flights and older tracklogs of other pilots.

After investigation, XContest concluded that “all Eliya’s personal bests are stolen from other pilots”.

These included: a 204km FAI triangle logged by Eliya as his own on 18 July 2022 but in fact lifted from a 2013 flight made by German pilot and author Burkhard Martens; a 269km open distance flight Eliya said he flew on 21 August 2023 but was in fact copied from a 2017 flight; and a 299km free triangle Eliya claimed to have flown on 1 May this year but was instead copied from another pilot’s 2023 flight.

None of the pilots who had their genuine tracklogs downloaded and re-used were aware.

Other flights Eliya made up included an enchainment where he said he had linked together three classic Alpine climbs – the Grandes Jorasses, Matterhorn and Eiger – by paraglider. This feat was reported by this website, on social media and in the climbing press. A 228km flight logged on 11 March 2023 and claimed as a new Israeli national record is also suspect, according to XContest.

Jakub explained that all the fraudulent flights had likely been created using a third-party app. He said: “The app – not XCTrack – he used to create fraudulent IGC files was probably the easiest to hack or find a comfortable way to sign manipulated tracklogs.”

Jakub said that while “technically” it’s possible to implement more thorough checks of tracklogs to compare them for similarities, “we don’t expect anyone really wants to cheat, because [XContest] is just for fun.”

While Eliya’s actions are not illegal, deliberately defrauding a pilot-centred platform which operates on trust will be seen as a shocking breach of sporting integrity by most pilots who use the website.

When presented with the allegations Eliya did not deny them and said, “I feel ashamed like I never felt before” and explained he “got lost in a story I told myself.”

He cited personal circumstances which included family bereavement and personal ill health for his actions.

He requested that XContest delete his data and went on to close or make private his paragliding-related social media accounts, including Facebook, where he had 6,600 followers, Instagram and Strava.

In a written reply to questions sent by email Eliya added: “XContest is a wonderful gift for paragliding, and I stained it. I asked to delete my profile because I don’t deserve to be part of this public world anymore. Please forgive me.”

It is not the first time Eliya has been caught faking information. In a much more serious case he ended up serving significant jail time for financial fraud carried out more than two decades ago.

According to an interview published in October 2022 by Keshet 12 News, an Israeli news website, Eliya, also known as Elia and Yaniv, was born in Netanya, Israel in 1983. A gifted student he started university aged 15 and graduated with a degree in economics while still a teenager. 

From there he got a job with a credit card company in Tel Aviv but also started to forge credit cards at scale in the evenings, eventually stealing the equivalent of at least €125,000. When caught, age 21, he fled from house arrest in Israel to Switzerland where he lived under various identities for 12 years. While there he completed a master’s degree in finance in Zurich, according to Keshet 12 News.

He was arrested when he eventually returned to Israel using a false passport and was charged with “fraud, forgery, theft and impersonation”. In 2016 he was sentenced to 28 months in prison.

In prison he would train for hike-and-fly by climbing the prison stairwells wearing a 9kg pack, Keshet 12 News reported. He was released in 2018.

In 2022 he was due to take part in the X-Pyr but withdrew before the start due to, he said at the time, a foot injury.

Stories on this website relating to flights claimed by Eliya will be corrected.