In the first of the Vienna Cybercrime Trials (“VCT”), the Israeli principal of the cybercrime organization operated via the Bulgarian E&G Bulgaria, Gal Barak, was sentenced to four years in prison in early September 2020. One reason for the relatively modest sentence was Barak’s confession. Through his lawyers, Barak also submitted documents that massively incriminated his Russian partner Vladislav Smirnov and his Binex Group, making him de facto the mastermind behind the Barak scams. Barak also snitched on a former Israeli partner for being a mastermind and thus reduced his role to that of a sort of viceroy in a global Cybercrime Organization.
Scam affiliate of Russian group
Gal Barak has presented affiliate agreements that were concluded between his companies and the Binex Group LP of Vladislav Smirnov. As usual, Smirnov’s Ukrainian partner and managing director Leonid Olschevskyi has signed the agreement (see screenshot above). Through the brand Binex, one of the worst binary options scams was performed which mainly attacked Russian investors from boiler rooms in Ukraine. The cyber police in Ukraine has already smashed the Binex scam in 2018.
Gal Barak‘s scam operating companies such as Matching Blue Consulting SLU, operating in Spain, or Dynamic Solutions Ltd and Bright Ideas Ltd, registered in the Marshall Islands, were affiliates of Binex Group LP (www.binexgroup.com). Apparently, the millions paid by Binex Group LP to the accounts of the Barak companies at the Bulgarian Investbank via the UK FCA-licensed payment processor Connectum.
Smirnov and Olschevskyi have also entered into partnership agreements with the Austrian-Ukrainian payment processor Fondy, controlled by the former head of the Vienna Stock Exchange, Stefan Zapotocky, through Binex Group LP and the associated Czech DreamsPay Technologies s.r.o. (read this FinTelegram report here).
The Vienna Cybercrime Trials “(“VCT”) are becoming more and more an international cybercrime thriller. The traces laid out by Gal Barak lead to Russia, Israel and the United States to Gery Shalon. Numerous emails, WhatsApp and Telegram messages from Shalon show that he was operationally the boss of Barak in the scams around E&G Bulgaria. It seems that Barak and his wife Marina Barak (aka Marina Andreeva) have only been some small fishes swimming with big sharks and predators.
