Yukom Case – Victims allegedly lost $113 million with BinaryBook and BigOption

The binary options court season will open next week. The largest binary options fraud case to date to be brought to trial begins on July 16, 2019, in New York. The former CEO of the Israeli boiler room operator Yukom Communications, Lee Elbaz, and another 17 people from the Yukom environment are accused of fraud. According to FinanceFeeds, the U.S. prosecutors on Monday submitted a trial brief summarizing the legal and factual issues it deems to be relevant to the upcoming trial of Lee Elbaz.

The Loss

Records secured by U.S. and Israeli authorities show the loss suffered by the schemes‘ victims. By late 2017 victim-clients had deposited approximately $185,000,000 into BinaryBook and BigOption accounts but had withdrawn some 35,000,000 amounting to net deposits of just under $150,000,000. In the end, clients had less than $37,000,000 million left in their accounts, meaning that the clients had to recognize losses of over $113,000,000.

The lies

The U.S. indictment purports that, between May 2014 and June 2017, Lee Elbaz, aka Lena Green, directed a scheme to defraud binary options investors by lying to investors and misleading them about the nature of binary options trading and the defendant’s business. Elbaz is alleged to have directed and controlled the scheme both on a strategic and day-to-day level. She hired and trained employees to lie to clients in order to induce them to send money. Elbaz also trained her employees to engage in fraudulent tactics to prevent clients from withdrawing funds from their accounts.

The U.S. prosecutors anticipate that cooperating witnesses from Yukom will testify at trial and confirm the allegations.

The SpotOption Collusion

One tactic Elbaz allegedly applied to make clients lose was known as putting a winning client on “high risk” in collusion with the trading software provider.

SpotOption, the Israeli white-label provider of the trading software who hosted BinaryBook and BigOption also controlled client “risk settings.” If a client was identified inside BinaryBook and BigOption as a winner, Elbaz and her team would contact SpotOption and arrange for the client’s risk settings to be adjusted in such that it was less likely future bets would win. By stacking the deck against the client, Elbaz prevented scenarios where clients would try to withdraw winnings.

The files of the US prosecutors clearly show that white label providers like SpotOptions played a key role in the Israeli binary options fraud industry. The evidence provided by US prosecutors lends credit to the hypothesis that there was a collusion between boiler room operators such as Yukom and the respective white label provider about the planned fraud at the customer. This collusion comprised all binary options platforms (brands) operated by this white-label provider and the respective boiler rooms. This very collusion was the ground for the fraudulent binary options industry.

The Yukom Case indictments

In their latest filing, the prosecutors disclosed additional names of alleged co-conspirators in the Yukom Case. The list includes the Yukom shareholder Yossi Herzog, Yakov “Kobi” Cohen, Ori Maymon (a/k/a “Patrick Accardo”), Elad Bigelman (a/k/a “Michael Goldberg”), Nissim Alfasi (a/k/a “Nick Onasis”), Ronen Roytman (a/k/a “Alexander Goldman”).

In addition, the following persons are also charged. Some of them have already committed fraud with binary options for guilty.

• Lee Elbaz (a/k/a “Lena Green”), the former CEO of the Israel-based company, Yukom Communications, was found guilty after a three-week jury trial of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud. Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 9, 2019 .
• Lissa Mel (a/k/a “Monica Sanders”) worked as boiler room agent for Numaris. She pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was sentenced to a 12-months prison term and a restitution payment of $288,024.
• Austin Smith, (a/k/a “John Ried“) former Vice President of Numaris, a partner of Yukom and founder of Wealth Recovery International pleaded guilty, Sentencing has been scheduled for September 3, 2019.
• Liora Welles (a/k/a “Lindsay Cole” “Lindsay Wells,” and “Lindsay Taylor”) pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Sentencing has been scheduled for Sept 20, 2019.
• Shira Uzan (a/k/a “Shira Baror” and “Emily Laski”) pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud charged.  Sentencing has been scheduled for Sept 20, 2019. 
• Yair Hadar (a/k/a “Steven Gold”) pleaded guilty on March 21, 2019. Sentencing has been scheduled for Sept 23, 2019.
• Yossi Herzog, a beneficial owner of the Yukom Scheme, is indicted with binary options fraud. Trial date and details of the indictment are not yet publicly known.
• Kobi Cohen, a beneficial owner of the Yukom Scheme, is indicted with binary options fraud. Trial date and details of the indictment are not yet publicly known.