Tag: Yukom Communications

A few days ago, Israeli citizen Sabrina Elofer was sentenced to six months of house arrest by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in connection with the vast Israeli binary options fraud scheme Yukom Communications. As part of her settlement, Elofer has also agreed to pay more than $2.9 million in restitution. Binary options were banned in most regulatory regimes in 2017, but fraud schemes will keep the courts busy for longer.

Lee Elbaz, 42, is a former CEO of the Israeli binary options scam scheme Yukom Communications, which defrauded investors worldwide of at least $140 million. In 2019, a U.S. jury found Elbaz guilty, including bank wire fraud. She was sentenced to 22 years in prison and $28 million in restitution payments. Elbaz was working from Israel and portrayed herself as a mere middle manager following the directions of the scheme's owners, Yossi Herzog and Kobi Cohen. She still fights her U.S. conviction.

The binary options industry was conceived in Israel as a gamification of the Forex industry. Forex for the stupid, it was. One of the masterminds and a member of our super villains' list was Yossi Herzog. Together with his junior partner Yakov "Kobi" Cohen, he launched, among others, the Yukom Scheme. While their former CEO, Lee Elbaz, and other managers were sentenced to prison and fines in the U.S., Herzog and Cohen are not available for the U.S. authorities.

The Times of Israel reports more arrests in the notorious binary options schemes operator Yukom Communications. Ori Maymon, Nissim Alfasi, Afik Tori, Oron Montgomery, Dave Barzilay, and Gilad Mazugi,, were arrested at the request of U.S. prosecutors. Their lawyers are fighting the extradition. Former CEO Lee Elbaz received 22 years of prison time and a $28 million restitution payments order. In March 2022, Elad Bigelman, former brand manager for BigOption, was sentenced to a 36-months prison term. The case will continue with a few more sentences, it seems!

The 35-year-old Israeli Gal Barak has shown how helpless the E.U. is in the fight against cybercrime. Barak, along with U.S. defendant Gery Shalon and Russian Vladislav Smirnov, ran a global network of binary options and CFD broker scams, defrauding tens of thousands of victims of more than $200M. In Sept 2020, he was sentenced to a four-year prison term but released on bail after just one year. Upon his release, a private jet flew him to Israel, where he announced plans to launch a $20 million cybercrime fund to benefit from cybercrime energy!

Yukom Communications was the Israeli boiler room operator behind vast binary options scams BigOption, BinaryBook, or BinaryOnline and caused retail investors worldwide $150M losses. Elad Bigelman was the brand manager for BigOption. On March 14, 2022, Judge Paula Xinis handed a prison term of 36 months and three years of supervised release to Bigelman. It was the latest decision in the still-pending Yukom Case

Israeli lawyer Moshe Strugano, 52, is a greedy man always looking for more money. He was one of the facilitating lawyers of the fraudulent Israeli binary options scene. Scammers like Yossi Herzog, Kobi Cohen, Lee Elbaz, David Cartu, et al have run dozens of binary options scams worldwide, defrauding tens of thousands of consumers out of hundreds of millions. They could not have done this without the support of lawyers like Moshe Strugano. The US prosecutors charged him with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud and sought his extradition from Israel.

This is perhaps not too good news for the German regulator. Fibonatix, founded by the Israeli Tal Miller, is a notorious high-risk payment processor. It has been facilitating dozens of broker scams. Fibonatix was also one of the payment processors of Gal Barak's cybercrime organization E&G Bulgaria. Barak confirmed that in addition to Payvision, Fibonatix was laundering stolen funds. Fibonatix, regulated as a payment institution by the FCA since 2018, announced the opening of an office in Berlin. It plans to serve the put a specific focus on the DACH region!

Lee Elbaz, an Israeli, was hired as the CEO for the Yukom boiler room in Israel. She managed the fraud on investors under direction and instruction. The U.S. jury found her guilty of fraud. She was sentenced to 22 years in prison and $28 million in restitution payments. On Dec. 18, 2020, she filed the appeal, asking for a vacation of the conviction because her former boss Yossi Herzog, also charged, has not provided testimony. He would have confirmed that Elbaz had no intention to commit fraud, the appeal argues.

Yossi Herzog, charged in the Yukom Case in the U.S. with binary options fraud to the tune of $200 million is one of the alleged supervillains of the binary options era. Apparently, he defrauded tens of thousands of victims out of hundreds of millions with his broker schemes in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. As a result of Australian investigations, the Australian regulator ASIC is now heavily criticized for not having taken action against Herzog and his scams earlier.

The U.S. SEC charged the two Israeli citizens Anton Senderov, 35, and Lior Babazara a/k/a Lior Bar, 38, with defrauding more than 2,800 U.S. investors and causing them to lose over $5 million through the binary options scams LBinary and Ivory Option. On August 27, 2020, the agency obtained an order approving a final motion for a consent judgment.

We have recently requested information on the whereabouts of the two beneficial owners behind the binary options fraud scheme being pursued by the U.S. authorities around the Israeli Yukom Communications Ltd. Specifically, we wanted to know the whereabouts of Yossi Herzog, the former boss and teacher of the already convicted Lee Elbaz. Rumors in Tel Aviv wanted to know that he is in Russia. In fact, however, he might be in Odessa, Ukraine.