The binary options industry was conceived in Israel as a gamification of the Forex industry. Forex for the stupid, it was. One of the masterminds and a member of our super villains’ list was Yossi Herzog. Together with his junior partner Yakov “Kobi” Cohen, he launched, among others, the Yukom Scheme. While their former CEO, Lee Elbaz, and other managers were sentenced to prison and fines in the U.S., Herzog and Cohen are not available for the U.S. authorities.
That the Yukom Scheme is far from being a “cold case” for U.S. authorities is shown by the arrest of six former managers and employees in Israel at the request of the U.S.
The Yukom Scheme masterminded by Yossi Herzog involved the binary options brands BinaryBook, BigOption, and BinaryOnline. The boiler room operators behind these brands were Yukom Communications Ltd and Numaris Communication Ltd in Israel, Linkopia Mauritius Ltd., Wirestech Limited, WSB Investment Limited, and Zolarex Ltd.
Yossi Herzog, his partner Kobi Cohen, and others are still wanted by U.S. prosecutors and the U.S. Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC). The latter had filed a fraud complaint against Yossi Herzog and other defendants, charging them a $103 million trading fraud. In October 2020, the Court entered default against Herzog and seven other defendants. In Oct 2021, Cohen’s attorney obtained a stay of the case until either Cohen enters a guilty plea or there is a verdict in his parallel criminal case, United States v. Cohen, et al., 19-cr-00077-PX, in which Cohen has been indicted.
A whistleblower told FinTelegram in 2020 that Herzog was in Odesa, Ukraine. This made sense as Ukraine was one of the centers of the binary options industry and had many boiler room operators. We don’t know whether he left after the war with Russia began, we don’t know. Maybe he was never there.
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We would like to know where Yossi Herzog and Kobi Cohen are currently located. If you have any information, please share it with us through our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
