6 Israeli citizens set for US extradition over Yukom binary options scheme
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The State Attorney’s Office of Israel has requested the Jerusalem District Court to approve the extradition of six Israeli citizens to the United States. The citizens are being deported to stand trial for engaging in a binary options scheme targeting US citizens and other countries.
Israel to extradite six citizens
The scheme orchestrated by the six Israeli citizens led to losses of $145 million to investors. The losses were incurred between 2016 and 2017. TheMarker, a local publication in Israel, said that the six Israeli citizens that were arrested and are set to be deported to the US include Afik Tori, Dave Barzilai, Gilad Magozi, Nissim Alfasi, Oron Montgomery, and Uri Maimon.
The scheme was operated by Lee Elbaz, who served as the former CEO of Yukom Communications. Elbaz ran the scheme through fake binary websites known as BigOption and BinaryBook. In 2019, Elbaz was sentenced to 22 years in prison by the District Court of Maryland.
Elbaz was charged with several counts of wire fraud and conspiracy. He was arrested in 2017 on these charges as she traveled to New York. She was then convicted along with 15 others, who were also named defendants in the case.
One of the charged individuals is Lissa Mel, a former reality show contestant from Israel. Mel received a prison sentence of 12 months for being involved in the scheme. Besides serving the prison sentence, Mel was also required to pay restitution of $288,024 to the victims of this scheme.
Yukom binary options fraud
The court documents show that the employees of Yukom, under the instructions of Elbaz, purposefully gave misleading information to investors to dupe them into investing in the company’s fake binary options business.
Yukom operated several call centers that were managed from Caesarea and Tel Aviv. The call centers were used to pitch the business to investors. The call representatives gave false claims that the business represented the interest of investors. However, instead of serving these investors, the business made profits from their losses.
The staff also gave the investors access to false names and qualifications. It did this while giving false claims that the company operated from London. The Federal Bureau of Investigations investigated the fraudulent operations of this company. The FBI visited the headquarters of Yukom in Israel as part of the investigations.
The FBI found that the company managed to solicit $145 million from investors. Despite the high amount, they only managed to return $20 million to investors between 2016 and 2017. The company promised investors significant returns when they invested, but these returns were never realized, with investors’ money being channeled to other uses.
