Israeli lawyer Moshe Strugano, 50, was a busy man. He was firmly anchored in the Israeli binary options scam scene and one of the lawyers of the fraudulent Yukom binary options scheme. It is well known that Israeli scammers like Yossi Herzog, Kobi Cohen, Lee Elbaz, or David Cartu have run dozens of binary options scams worldwide, cheating tens of thousands of small investors and consumers out of hundreds of millions. They could not have done this without the legal opinions of their lawyers.
In the United States, Lee Elbaz, former CEO of Israel’s Yukom Communication Ltd of Yossi Herzog and Kobi Cohen was sentenced to a 24-year prison term and $28 million restitution payment for binary options fraud. Yukom operated the scams BinaryBook, BigOption, and BinaryOnline. Strugano was arrested in early 2019 by City of London police and later released on bail.
Legal Opinions for scammers
The Financial Times reports that the UK authorities are mediating against Moshe Strugano in connection with the Yukom-Scam. His detainment in early 2019 was only a first step. In fact, without Strugano’s involvement, the implementation of this gigantic scam – as well as many other scams – would not have been possible.
Moshe Strugano has issued “all-in-good-order” legal opinions for the vast Yukom scam network. Strugano has obviously confirmed the legality and compliance with all KYC/AML regulations. In 2019, Strugano or someone on his behalf wrote a blog post on Steemit claiming that he was strengthening Lee Elbaz’s defenses. It has not rescued her from justice. She was convicted because the US prosecutors were able to explain in great detail and supported by the respective evidence, the fraudulent conception of Yukom’s binary options scams. It was for sure a milestone trial.
Currently, there is also a lawsuit by the regulator U.S. Commodities and Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) against Lee Elbaz, Yossi Herzog, Kobi Cohen, and others pending. The CFTC has also brought an action for fraud. Yossi Herzog currently appears to be on the run, while Elbaz is in prison.
It has now become apparent that the legal opinions issued by Strugano and other Israeli lawyers were not even worth the paper they were written on. The required checks and due diligence regarding KYC/AML/CTF were certainly not carried out. Nevertheless, Strugano et al have collected millions of dollars in fees.
David Cartu and GMM
Yukom was just one of Strugano’s scam clients. Another was the Canadian-born Israeli David Cartu and the many binary options scams of his Irish-registered GreyMountain Management Ltd (GMM). The Canadian Ontario Securities Exchange (OSC) has sued David Cartu and his brothers Joshua Cartu, Jonathan Cartu, and GMM for binary options fraud.
Tradorax, 23Traders and many other scams
It would overload this article if we were to list all the scams in which Moshe Strugano has provided his legal opinions. But we should mention the big and well-known binary options Tradorax and 23Traders. The latter have become known, among other things, because the fraud drove a Canadian customer to suicide.
The illegal and fraudulent broker scheme 23Traders has not only received many investor warnings from financial regulators but is also said to have pushed its Canadian client-victim Fred Turbide into suicide in December 2016. He had lost all of his savings and a substantial amount of borrowed money, totaling more than CAD300,000 (USD 229,060).
Strugano, like all the other facilitators of these scams, will try to convince himself that he was just doing his job as an attorney and was certainly not involved in any fraud of any of his clients. Heaven forbid! But the US and UK authorities might see this differently and are now investigating. This is good news for all defrauded investors.
