The Canadian-Israeli brothers David Cartu and Jonathan Cartu, together with Joshua Cartu, are at the very center of a gigantic binary options fraud scheme around the Irish GreyMountain Management Ltd. The Irish Times reports that the Florida-based investor William Thomas Powers and more than 30 other investors sue David Cartu, Jonathan Cartu, and the former Irish directors Ryan Coates and Liam Grainger over more than $4 million in losses. GreyMountain Management Ltd was wound up. The court case started on 28 June 2022 before Justice Michael Twomey.
The Irish Lawsuit
Marcus Dowling SC, the legal representative of William Thomas Powers, said the individual defendants were “participants in an enormous fraud” in which some $150 million went through company accounts as part of a “unified fraudulent enterprise”. While the Central Bank was alerted to Greymountain’s fraudulent activity in 2016, David Cartu instructed his solicitor to lie to the regulator about what was going on, counsel said.
Greymountain received the money from the victims, and the defendants laundered the money through a number of other entities such as Glenridge Capital, which was controlled by David Cartu.
The U.S. CFTC Fraud Complaint
The U.S. Commodity and Futures Commission (CFTC) filed a fraud complaint against the Cartu Brothers and their co-conspirators in September 2020 alleging vast binary options fraud with a volume of $165 million. The lawsuit could not be served by the CFTC or the relevant U.S. court. The Cartu Brothers, along with the Texas resident Ryan Masten and the Canadian-Israeli brothers Leeav Peretz and Nati Peretz, are accused of binary options fraud and securities violations involving companies that took in US$165 million in credit card payments from investors. Please read this report here.
According to the CFTC complaint, the Cartu Brothers’ business was highly lucrative. Josh Cartu and Jonathan Cartu each transferred US$9.2 million in profits from these companies to offshore accounts. Josh’s money was transferred to a company set up in Belize; Jonathan’s to a company in Seychelles. David Cartu received US$4.9 million through a corporation in the British Virgin Islands and another US$4.1 million via a U.K. corporation.
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If you have any information about the Cartu Brothers – David Cartu, Jonathan Cartu, or Joshua Cartu – please let us know via our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
