It’s not exactly news but an update on our Yukom story. Elad Bigelman was one of the defendants in the US Yukom Case. Yukom Communications was the Israeli boiler room operator behind vast binary options scams BigOption, BinaryBook, or BinaryOnline and caused retail investors worldwide $150M losses. Elad Bigelman was the brand manager for BigOption. On March 14, 2022, Judge Paula Xinis handed a prison term of 36 months and three years of supervised release to Bigelman. It was the latest decision in the still-pending Yukom Case.
The Israeli Yossi Herzog, Kobi Cohen, and their CEO Lee Elbaz controlled the scheme. While Elbaz was sentenced to a 22-year prison time and $28M restitution payments in 2019 and 2020, respectively, Herzog and Cohen are on the run. Not only the U.S. prosecutors are after Yossi Herzog and Kobi Cohen. The U.S. CFTC filed a fraud complaint against (report here). Cohen has appeared to defend the CFTC’s action. In Oct 2021, he secured a stay of the CFTC case until his criminal case is decided, FX News Group reported.
Read the report on Lee Elbaz and her masterminds here!
In July 2019, the Yukom trials started in the United States. The former Yukom CEO Lee Elbaz (pictured left) was one of 15 defendants charged. She denied any wrongdoing and fraud and did not plea guilty. Some of her former employees, however, pleaded guilty to the binary options fraud charges and cooperated with prosecutors. Elad Bigelman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in October 2021 and agreed that the loss attributable to him was at least $3.76M.
Bigelman worked with the stage name Michael Goldberg for Israeli Yukom Communications Ltd from at least January 2015 to about September 2017. He was the brand manager for BigOption and supervised retention agents. According to the US prosecutors, Bigelman also performed retention services on behalf of BigOption himself.
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