Thursday, September 19, 2024

Gal Barak – The Wolf Of Sofia And Another Israel-Serbia Connection

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The Israeli Gal Barak, the so-called Wolf of Sofia, has been exposed as the beneficial owner and operator of E&G Bulgaria and its many illegal broker schemes. In an international enforcement action conducted by German, Austrian, and Bulgarian authorities Gal Barak has been arrested. Allegedly, he currently has been released into house arrest for health reasons. Via the Bulgarian Investbank Barak and his partner Marina Andreeva laundered many millions of stolen client money to Israel and offshore destinations. FinTelegram found another partner of the Wolf of Sofia in Israel.

Pozza Pizza And Serbian Boiler Rooms

According to the information provided to FinTelegram, the Israeli Moar Sioni is one of the partners of the Israeli Gal Barak. We learned that parts of Barak’s illicit money have been laundered into projects of Maor Sioni. The latter is not only the owner of some ventures in Tel Aviv such as Pozza Pizza or NoWayOut but also Barak’s partner in Serbian boiler rooms operations.

These boiler rooms are the real perpetrators behind illegal broker schemes such as SafeMarkets, XTraderFX, or Golden Markets. Boiler room employees call clients in a very aggressive way and try to convince them to invest money into the schemes. They do so with false promises and typically receive a percentage of the invested money as a commission. Hence, boiler room employees are to be regarded as co-conspirators.

It has been confirmed to us by Serbian whistleblowers that Maor Sioni is a partner of Gal Barak and/or E&G Bulgaria which owns and operates the Serbian boiler room company My Markets DOO. From the Serbian commercial register, one learns that My Markets DOO is a subsidiary of E&G Bulgaria. According to the information available to FinTelegram this Serbian boiler room handled customers of OptionStars, CryptoPoint, and XTraderFX.

The Broken Serbian Connection

Over the last couple of weeks, FinTelegram received precious information of the boiler room activities of Gal Barak and his friends and partners Gery Shalon and Uwe Lenhoff in Serbia. FinTelegram learned that Lenhoff and Barak invited Serbian business people to invest in their boiler rooms and illegal broker schemes. Allegedly, the dream team betrayed Serbian businessmen by many millions. The now-imprisoned German Uwe Lenhoff is said to have cheated Serbian and Montenegrin investors by millions with allegedly promising investments in the public-listed Veltyco Group. In fact, however, it turns out that Veltyco under Lenhoff’s leadership was merely a Potemkin village designed to attract money from investors. From what we learned, Barak and Lenhoff are no longer welcome to Serbia, Montenegro, or Bosnia anymore.

Serbia used to be one of the favorite playgrounds for Israeli perpetrators such as Gal Barak, Kfir Levy or Maor Sioni. Hence, the started to open boiler rooms and payment services company over there. But times changed, we heard. Israeli perpetrators are no longer welcome the Balkans in the first place.

Report Illegal Broker Activities

Illegally operating broker schemes and their boiler rooms are part of fast-growing global cybercrime activities. Millions of investors are defrauded by those broker sites losing billions of euros every year. Hence, it is important to warn investors of such illicit sites. If you are a victim of an illegally operating broker site such as Tradeinvest90, Option888, XMarkets, XTraderFX, GToptions, StoxMarket, Bluetrading, FXTrade777, or KayaFX please file your claim and report activities via our whistleblower system: