Novox Capital, once a CySEC-regulated company, operated some “regulated” binary options brands. Additionally, Novox provided services to numerous scam schemes and offered them a regulatory umbrella: Option888 of Uwe Lenhoff, OptionStars of Gal Barak, and many others. The beneficial owners of the Novox Group were the cousins’ Shay Hillel and Yehoram Hillel. They were also the main shareholders of the broker software company Tradologic. Novox and the Hillels are also at the center of the various trials.
The Technology & Service Provider
As a technology and service provider, Tradologic, which has since been closed, is at the center of the investigations surrounding scams such as Option888, XtraderFX, OptionStars, and many others that were implemented as white-label solutions by Tradologic. Besides Tradologic, other providers such as PandaTS or SpotOption were (and are) also the subject of investigations by the authorities. The allegation is being investigated as to whether and how Tradologic and the other providers could have been involved in scam operations and contributed to the manipulation of customers’ accounts and their trades.
The Outsourced Risk Management
Tradologic, as can be read in the criminal files, had also offered risk management to broker clients. However, this service was not provided by Tradologic but was outsourced to Novotick, a company of the CySEC-regulated Novox Group owned and controlled by Shay Hillel and Yehoram Hillel (Hillel Brothers). Israel Bash and Shoham Cohen headed the group.
The Surprising Guilty Plea
The manager in charge of risk management in the Novox Group at the time, Ilian Bonchev, a Bulgarian, was indicted by the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office for alleged manipulation of client (victim) activities. The trial against him and other Tradologic people will start soon. Now it became known, Recently it became known that Bonchev pleaded guilty to manipulating trades of victims of broker scams while working for Novotick. Thus, he is directly dragging the Novox Group into the criminal proceedings.
The Novox Group & Tradologic
According to the authorities, Shay Hillel and Yehoram Hillel have been deeply involved in Tradologic and facilitated many broker scams with Novox services. Tradologic was founded in 2008 by Ilan Tzorya in Israel. In 2010, the Hillel Brothers stepped in, invested, and acquired 65% of the company’s shares. They became the controlling beneficial owners.
It is also telling that the Novox Group people did the accounting for Tradologic until 2017 and had financial control over the company.
Novox Group was aware that Tradologic customers, such as Gal Barak, were misleading customers about the alleged regulation and worked with parallel unregulated brands. The email below shows that:
Hi Gal, it has come to our attention that you are registering scores of European clients under your non-regulated platform [OptionStarsGlobal]. This in Itself is not a problem. However, these clients, who live in Europe, have to go to NVX’s [Novox] regulated optionstars.com. There they read all about being regulated under NVX, and they find the complaint form for NVX, and information on CySEC. This is the reason we are continuously receiving complaints from your non-regulated EUROPEAN clients, and threats from them that they will report us to CySEC. We need a solution to this problem ASAP.
Michael Paul, executive director Novox Capital (Email to Gal Barak)
The New Investors
In 2014, the Israeli tech investor Gery Shalon and his Russian partner Vladislav “Vlad” Smirnov acquired 30% of Tradologic. Unfortunately, the U.S. prosecutors charged Shalon with the largest financial cybercrime activities in July 2015. He was arrested in Israel and extradited to the U.S. in 2016. Shalon became super-toxic, Thus, in 2017, his partner Vlad Smirnov had to buy out the Hillel brothers from Tradologic completely.
Then, in 2017, Gal Barak, a close partner of Shalon and Smirnov, became a shareholder and was also installed as a director in Tradologic Group because Tzorya resigned after alleged differences over business conduct.
What’s Next?
Bonchev’s guilty plea was a bang for the buck. We can now look forward to the further course of the trial. From our perspective, this guilty plea directly implicates the Novox Group and the individuals involved in the trials in the various jurisdictions. Stay tuned!
Share Information
If you have any information about the Novox Group, the Hillel brothers, and their former customers and partners, please let us know via our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
