The Public Prosecution Office in Bavaria, Germany, brought charges against the operators of fraudulent binary options platforms, including GetFinancial. Israeli nationals aged 34, 34, and 62 must answer in proceedings, the prosecutors informed. The GetFinancial scheme was launched in 2015 with a boiler room in Israel. Additional boiler rooms have been set up in Georgia, Moldova, and Armenia in subsequent years. Tens of thousands of victims in Germany and many more in other jurisdictions lost their money.
The Gery Shalon Gang
GetFinancial and the other systems were part of the cybercrime network of Georgia-born Israeli Gery Shalon. German law enforcement agencies reportedly want to talk to him urgently. Shalon’s brother-in-law, Israeli lawyer David Bar-El was arrested in Israel and is said to be among those indicted, according to insiders. FinTelegram cannot confirm this at this time.
The three defendants, in this case, are accused of having established and operated a criminal organization. They were arrested in Slovenia, Italy, and Israel in 2021 and subsequently extradited to Germany at the instigation of the Bavarian Cybercrime Central Office.
In separate proceedings, a 44-year-old Ukrainian and Israeli national, who allegedly joined the group of perpetrators in 2019 and was responsible for web campaigns, is facing charges. Under his leadership, marketing departments in Tbilisi and Kyiv allegedly prepared not only the websites of the fraudulent investment platforms but also advertising pages on which potential customers were promised investment profits and on which they could leave their phone numbers and email addresses. He is accused of having been a leading member part of the criminal organization. He was arrested in Poland at the end of February 2022 when leaving Ukraine and extradited from there to Germany on March 15, 2022.
Finally, in another case, a 30-year-old Russian woman was charged with allegedly being hired in December 2018 as a manager for the group’s IT development team. The task of this team was, among other things, to provide payment service providers with access to the customer management system,obtain and manage phone numbers and email addresses for call center employees, and continue to develop the customer management system. She was arrested in Georgia, extradited to Germany in May 2022 and is now facing charges including six counts of commercial and gang fraud.
Fraud Schemes And Losses
According to the German prosecutors, the indicted perpetrators are responsible for the following fraudulent investment platforms:
- TradeSolid and SolidCFD (with deposits from deceived clients worldwide amounting to at least €3.8 million).
- IntegraOption and FXIntegra (at least €113,880)
- TechOption (at least €175,000)
- GetFinancial under the domains getfinancial.com and get-financial.com (at least €16 million)
- ProCapitalMarkets (at least €7.1 million)
- GainFinTech (at least €2.7 million)
- MyCoinBanking (at least €15.1 million)
- AccepTrade (at least €3 million)
- ProfitsTrade (at least €25.2 million)
- CoinsBanking (at least €3.4 million).
More Indictments Expected
Investigations by the Bavarian Cybercrime Central Office and the Criminal Investigation Department are continuing against other members of the group of perpetrators. Further extraditions are in preparation.
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