Opção binária vezes de israel

As autoridades israelenses atacam a empresa de opções binárias, detêm o CEO, vendedores.

funcionários do iTrader acusados ​​de fraude, fornecendo conselhos de investimento sem autorização, obstrução da justiça; O principal regulador disse aos tempos de Israel que ele pretende fechar toda a indústria.

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No que pode ser um pressentimento de uma repressão mais ampla, a Autoridade de Valores de Israel (ISA) em 8 de novembro realizou uma invasão altamente incomum nos escritórios da iTrader de Ramat Gan, uma empresa que ofereceu opções binárias e operações de câmbio para o público israelense, prendendo sete dos seus principais gerentes e vendedores.

O ISA acusou os sete homens de fornecer conselhos de investimento sem licença, bem como fraudes agravadas, que alegadamente ocorreram entre maio de 2018 e maio de 2018.

Prometido em parte por meses de relatórios no The Times of Israel sobre a fraude generalizada por empresas de opções binárias com sede em Israel, o ISA agora prometei fechar toda a indústria e está elaborando legislação, apoiada pelo Gabinete do Primeiro Ministro com esse objetivo. O ataque de terça-feira, marcado pelas prisões não só do CEO, mas também dos vendedores, indicou que a repressão tardia de empresas fraudulentas que estão duping e vítimas de fleecing em todo o mundo há anos pode se estender aos funcionários de nível inferior que podem ter acreditaram ser improváveis ​​de serem pegos e processados.

iTrader "é essencialmente uma máquina bem oleada de fraude e exploração de clientes", disse o advogado Eran Shacham-Shavit, o vice-advogado do departamento de investigações da ISA, ao Tribunal de Magistrados de Tel Aviv.

Falando em uma audiência de 9 de novembro para o lançamento dos suspeitos em condições restritivas, ele acrescentou: "Os clientes não entenderam o que eles estavam investindo e acreditavam nas falsidades que lhes apresentavam os funcionários da empresa, que se apresentavam como negociantes e sabiam exatamente o que as coisas enganosas dizem para que os clientes ganhem mais dinheiro. & # 8221;

& # 8220; Estes funcionários foram motivados pela ganância e pelo desejo de bônus à custa de seus clientes, esconderam detalhes relevantes sobre suas contas, e mesmo quando as perdas dos clientes montaram, os funcionários da empresa, conscientemente e sob supervisão de seus gerentes, explorou a situação, & # 8221; acrescentou o funcionário da ISA. & # 8220; Seu objetivo era alimentar a máquina de dinheiro bem oleada que levou a investimentos fracassados, com pleno conhecimento de que havia uma grande chance de seus clientes perderem seu dinheiro ".

Em comum com muitas das empresas de opções binárias israelitas, a iTrader promoveu seus negócios patrocinando uma franquia esportiva, a equipe de basquete Maccabi Tel Aviv. Ele mostrou seus negócios em um comercial com vários membros da equipe Maccabi.

Os sete homens detidos pela ISA são Ido Fishman, presidente e CEO da empresa; Daniel Swartz, gerente de vendas da Gal Media Trade Ltd., que opera a itrader. co. il, e o vice-presidente executivo de outra empresa administrada pela Fishman; Naor Noah, chefe de retenção; e Jonathan Tourjman, líder da equipe. Itzhak Babler, Itam Durab e Maor Jerby, três funcionários que trabalharam como "treinadores" comerciais também foram presos.

Todos os sete foram libertados sob fiança, mas proibiram deixar o país por 180 dias, enquanto o ISA continua a investigar o caso.

Em 14 de junho de 2018, a ISA rejeitou o pedido de licença da iTrader devido a duvidas sobre a probidade e a integridade da empresa. A empresa foi condenada a deixar de solicitar clientes, mas aparentemente ainda estava operando durante a incursão desta semana.

A ISA alegou, em 9 de novembro, que, além de fraudar clientes, Fishman, CEO da empresa, obstruera e interferiu com a investigação criminal do regulador na empresa.

O Times de Israel falou com dois cidadãos israelenses que perderam súditos de seis personagens para o iTrader: um homem que perdeu em relação a NIS 100.000 (US $ 26.000) e uma mulher divorciada com doença de Parkinson que perdeu a maior parte de suas economias de vida, com 600.000 NIS ($ 158.000).

No dia 9 de novembro, a audiência do Tribunal de Magistrados de Tel Aviv, um advogado de Ido Fishman e os outros seis suspeitos disseram ao juiz: "Nós fomos os principais patrocinadores da equipe de basquete Macabbi Tel Aviv, não uma empresa que operava nas sombras", acrescentando que Durante os três anos em questão, a empresa teve milhares de clientes, mas apenas 10 ações judiciais. "Na verdade, nos comportamos de forma transparente", disse o advogado.

Solicitando clientes no exterior.

O iTrader. co. il, que solicitou clientes israelenses, também está intimamente associado à marca FMTrader, uma corretora de opções binárias que continua a solicitar clientes no exterior. As duas empresas compartilham um endereço da Ramat Gan e têm membros da equipe em comum.

O FMTrader tem sido objeto de avisos de investidores pela Comissão de Valores do Manitoba do Canadá, pela Comissão de Valores Mobiliários e Investimentos da Austrália e pela Autoridade de Mercados Financeiros da Nova Zelândia.

"A ASIC aconselha que esta empresa possa estar envolvida em uma fraude, & # 8221; lê o aviso australiano. "Não lide com este negócio, pois não tem licença na Austrália".

A Comissão de Valores Mobiliários escreveu sobre o FMTrader: "Recentemente, falamos com um residente do Manitoba que investiu US $ 28 mil em negociações de opções binárias depois de descobrir o FMTrader através de um anúncio nas mídias sociais. Este investidor foi atraído pela promessa de "livre de risco" e "lucros elevados". Depois de investir US $ 5.000 em dinheiro e US $ 23.000 através de cartões de crédito, o investidor disse que não poderia retirar dinheiro até ele colocou um mínimo de US $ 1.000.000 em negociações. Com base em casos anteriores envolvendo opções binárias, é muito improvável que este jogador de 24 anos possa recuperar algum investimento ".

O Times de Israel vem expondo a indústria de opções binárias fraudulentas de Israel em uma série de artigos desde março, começando com um artigo intitulado "The Wolves of Tel Aviv, & # 8221; e estimou que a indústria aqui é mais de 100 empresas, a maioria das quais são fraudulentas e empregam uma variedade de ações para roubar o dinheiro de seus clientes. Essas empresas atraem suas vítimas para fazer o que são enganados para acreditar que serão investimentos rentáveis ​​a curto prazo, mas na maioria esmagadora dos casos, os clientes acabam perdendo a totalidade ou a quase totalidade do seu dinheiro.

O Ministério do Primeiro Ministro condenou o mês passado as "práticas sem escrúpulos" da indústria e pediu que ela fosse proscrito em todo o mundo.

Na semana passada, o presidente da ISA, Shmuel Hauser, disse ao The Times of Israel que as consultas começaram no enquadramento da legislação para impedir que todas as operações de opções binárias com sede em Israel visem qualquer um, em qualquer lugar. (As empresas israelenses já estão proibidas de atacar os israelenses). As consultas se estenderam ao procurador-geral Avichai Mandelblit e ao governo, disse ele.

Uma vez que tal lei passa, o ISA presumivelmente terá a autoridade para atacar e prender gerentes e funcionários de muitas empresas adicionais, e não apenas as empresas que visam os israelenses.

"Estou profundamente perturbado" pela indústria fraudulenta, disse Hauser. O objetivo da nova legislação é "pôr fim a toda a história" das operações de opções binárias em e de Israel, disse ele.

Israel proíbe a indústria de opções binárias, finalmente encerrando uma fraude enorme de 10 anos.

19 meses depois de o Times of Israel ter começado a expor arrisca global de vários bilhões de dólares, o Knesset dá aos operários três meses para fechar ou enfrentar os limites da prisão.

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Simona Weinglass é uma repórter investigativa no The Times of Israel.

O Knesset na segunda-feira aprovou por unanimidade uma lei para proibir a indústria de opções binárias de Israel, uma fraude enorme e de vários bilhões de dólares que defumou milhões de vítimas em todo o mundo por uma década.

A lei, que entrará em vigor no prazo de três meses, resultou diretamente do relatório de investigações do Times de Israel sobre a fraude, que começou com um artigo de março de 2018 intitulado "Os lobos de Tel Aviv: o vasto e amoral binário de Israel explorações de opções expostas. "A lei dá a todas as empresas binárias as intervenções três meses para cessar as operações. Depois disso, qualquer pessoa envolvida em opções binárias é punível com até dois anos de prisão.

Cinquenta e três membros do Knesset votaram a favor da lei e nenhum deles votou contra ela.

A indústria de opções binárias, algumas das quais fechou em Israel nos últimos meses, à medida que a legislação atravessava o Knesset, é uma empresa com sede em Israel que floresceu com quase nenhuma intervenção da lei desde 2007.

Menos de 20 israelenses foram presos por fraude de opções binárias, e nenhum deles foi indiciado. Em setembro, o FBI prendeu o CEO das opções binárias Lee Elbaz, quando desembarcou de um avião no aeroporto JFK, sublinhando os esforços crescentes da aplicação da lei internacional para enfrentar o crime.

Nós nos preocupamos com o movimento BDS, & # 8221; disse MK Rachel Azaria (Kulanu) em sua introdução à lei. & # 8220; Esta indústria tem um enorme impacto sobre a forma como Israel é visto em todo o mundo. Nossos funcionários do governo vão para conferências internacionais e seus colegas no exterior levantar as sobrancelhas por causa desta indústria. & # 8221;

A lei para proibir a indústria tomou forma depois que o presidente da Autoridade de Valores de Israel, Shmuel Hauser, alertou para a escala da fraude do The Times of Israel, prometeu em agosto de 2018 que tomaria as medidas necessárias para frustrar os fraudadores. Naquele mesmo mês, o chefe da Agência Judaica, Natan Sharansky, exortou o governo a fechar a indústria "repugnante, imoral". O gabinete do Primeiro Ministro pediu que ele fosse banido em todo o mundo.

Em resposta ao relatório do The Times of Israel, o Comitê de Controle do Estado da Knesset, liderado pela Karine Elharar de Yesh Atid & # 8217; convocou uma série de sessões no início deste ano para discutir como lidar com a fraude. Uma vez que o projeto de lei da Hauser foi redigido e recebeu a aprovação ministerial inicial, foi dirigido para a aprovação final do Knesset da segunda-feira, pelo Comitê de Reforma do Knesset, presidido por Azaria, por uma oposição furiosa dos principais atores da indústria e seus lobistas.

Em um discurso de bombas em uma reunião do Comitê de Reformas em agosto, o superintendente da Polícia de Israel, Gabi Biton, disse que os chefes de crimes israelenses estavam por trás da indústria de opções binárias e que o crime organizado no país foi enriquecedivelmente e fortalecido como resultado do fracasso da aplicação da lei por muitos anos para compreender a vastidão do problema.

"Nossos olhos foram abertos", disse Biton, que investiga fraude financeira e lavagem de dinheiro. "O que estamos vendo aqui é uma enorme empresa criminosa organizada. Estamos falando de criminosos em vários níveis de organizações criminosas, até o topo ".

Ele prometeu: # 8220; Usaremos todas as ferramentas à nossa disposição para desarraigar esse fenômeno ".

O Times de Israel providenciou as vítimas da fraude para testemunhar o comitê, incluindo a família de Fred Turbide - um pai canadense de quatro pessoas que morreu por suicídio em dezembro, tendo sido enganado de suas economias de vida por uma empresa de opções binárias com base em Israel .

No auge, as opções binárias foram estimadas em US $ 5 bilhões a US $ 10 bilhões por ano. Centenas de empresas operaram a partir de Israel, empregando milhares de israelenses, fraudando clientes em todo o mundo.

As empresas de opções binárias israelenses fraudulentas oferecem ostensivamente aos clientes em todo o mundo um investimento potencialmente lucrativo de curto prazo. Mas na realidade - através de plataformas de negociação fraudulentas, recusa de pagamento e outras operações de reabastecimento - essas empresas utilizam a grande maioria dos clientes da maioria ou de todo o seu dinheiro. Os vendedores fraudulentos escondem rotineiramente onde estão localizados, deturpam o que estão vendendo e usam falsas identidades.

A lei que passou na segunda-feira foi uma versão restrita do projeto de lei que foi apresentado no início deste ano. A conta original não só teria proibido toda a indústria de opções binárias, mas também as empresas forex e CFD que operam a partir de Israel sem licença. Posteriormente, foi diluído para se aplicar estritamente às opções binárias. Os críticos acusaram que isso cria uma lacuna e que, com a nova lei em vigor, as empresas de opções binárias fraudulentas podem simplesmente ajustar o produto que eles oferecem e continuar a operar.

Algumas ex-operadoras de opções binárias começaram a se concentrar em oportunidades de lucro nos campos de vendas de diamantes, cryptocurrencies, Initial Coin Offerings e empréstimos comerciais predatórios. Outros mudaram suas atividades no exterior & # 8212; incluindo a Ucrânia e Chipre.

Os lobos de Tel Aviv: as vastas e binárias opções de amorais de Israel estão expostas.

Uma indústria que transforma centenas de milhões de dólares, empregando milhares de pessoas, está cinicamente tricando ingênuos investidores potenciais em todo o mundo através de uma série de práticas corruptas. Isso está prejudicando suas vítimas e corre o risco de fazer a mesma reputação de Israel.

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Simona Weinglass é uma repórter investigativa no The Times of Israel.

Quando Dan Guralnek imigrou da Austrália para Israel em 2018, ele não antecipou se envolver em uma fraude na Internet internacional.

"Eu sempre quis mudar para Israel", diz Guralnek, que frequentou uma escola de dia judaica em Sydney.

Ele estava trabalhando na administração de uma fábrica na Austrália, quando seu chefe morreu de repente e, aos 28 anos, percebeu que era um bom momento para ele se mudar para Israel. "Eu pensei:" Estou livre, sem ataduras, posso ir ".

Guralnek se matriculou em Ulpan Etzion de Jerusalém para aprender hebraico, depois mudou-se para a vibrante e movimentada cidade de Tel Aviv, onde conseguiu uma série de empregos de salário mínimo para NIS 25 (um pouco mais de US $ 6) por hora: cortar vegetais em um restaurante, dirigindo uma pessoa com deficiência, trabalhando no turno da noite em um carrinho de hot-dog.

Mas em uma cidade com aluguéis altos e um custo de vida relativo aos salários (PDF) em segundo lugar apenas ao Japão, Guralnek não poderia sobreviver. Ele ouviu que os empregos em uma indústria chamavam de opções binárias pagas duas vezes o que ele estava ganhando, além de comissão.

& # 8216; O jogo da nossa e nós somos um bookie & # 8217; & # 8212; vendedor de opções ex-binárias.

"Assim que comecei a procurar um emprego, eu estava recebendo chamadas de empresas de opções binárias todos os dias", lembra. "Eles dominam o espaço do anúncio de trabalho".

Nem Guralnek teve dificuldade em conseguir um emprego.

"Você entra e eles fazem um grande show como eles estão avaliando se eles querem ou não você. Mas eles querem você. "

No dia em que Guralnek entrou nos escritórios pródigos de seu novo empregador na cidade costeira de Herzliya Pituah, ele sabia que ele havia chegado.

"Havia café grátis, comida grátis", diz Guralnek. "Meu salário foi de 7.500 shekels ($ 1.900) por mês, mais comissão".

Guralnek sentou-se em um call center com cerca de 50 outros funcionários, muitos dos quais eram novos imigrantes com fluência em uma variedade de idiomas. Seu trabalho era chamar pessoas ao redor do mundo e convencê-las a investir & # 8221; em um produto financeiro ostensivo chamado "opções binárias". Os clientes seriam encorajados a fazer um depósito & # 8212; para enviar dinheiro para sua empresa & # 8212; e então use esse dinheiro para fazer & # 8220; trades & # 8221 ;: Os clientes tentariam avaliar se uma moeda ou commodity iria subir ou descer nos mercados internacionais dentro de um determinado período de tempo curto. Se eles predisseram corretamente, eles ganharam dinheiro, entre 30 e 80 por cento da soma que eles derrubaram. Se eles estavam errados, eles perderam todo o dinheiro que eles colocaram nesse comércio. # 8221; Guralnek logo viu que, quanto mais negociações um cliente fez, mais perto eles perderam a totalidade do depósito inicial.

Ele tinha sido instruído a apresentar a opção binária como um "investimento" e ele próprio como "corretor", mesmo que ele soubesse que eles provavelmente perderiam todo seu dinheiro. "O cliente não está realmente comprando nada. O que ele compra é uma promessa da nossa empresa de que o pagaremos. O jogo da nossa e nós somos um apostador ", diz ele agora.

Antes de começar o trabalho, a empresa deu a Guralnek um curso de vendas de uma semana, no qual se lhe ensinava conhecimento financeiro suficiente para parecer bom para um cliente que sabia menos do que ele. Ele também foi instruído em táticas de vendas de alta pressão.

"Eles nos ensinaram a como incomodar as pessoas, a responder objeções, como mantê-las no telefone".

A sessão de treino era conhecida como um "curso de conversão" e o objetivo era aprender a transformar uma ligação telefônica em um cliente tomando seu primeiro depósito. Na sua empresa, os vendedores não podiam tomar um depósito de menos de US $ 250.

Durante o curso de vendas, a administração da empresa deu aos conselhos de Guralnek que o perseguiram mais tarde. "Eles nos disseram para deixar nossa consciência na porta".

Isso é legal?

À medida que as semanas passavam, mais e mais perguntas se formaram na mente de Guralnek # 8212; perguntas que sublinharam o bizarre mundo financeiro que ele havia entrado. Por que ele não conhecia os sobrenomes de seus gerentes? Por que os trabalhadores eram proibidos de falar hebraico ou de trazer celulares para o call center? Quem foi o CEO da empresa? Por que estava certo para a equipe árabe-israelense da empresa vender opções binárias em lugares como a Arábia Saudita, enquanto outros países, como Israel, Estados Unidos e Irã estavam fora de limites?

Pior ainda, Guralnek começou a suspeitar que, além das fracas probabilidades, os clientes tinham realmente ganhar algum dinheiro, e além das táticas agressivas de vendas, o que a empresa estava fazendo era francamente ilegal.

Por exemplo, todos os vendedores foram convidados a inventar um nome e biografia falsos. O call center usou a tecnologia Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), que exibiu um número de telefone local para clientes em qualquer lugar do mundo. O site da empresa listou um endereço em Chipre.

"Foi-me dito para dizer às pessoas que eu tinha anos de experiência no mercado, que eu havia estudado em Oxford e trabalhado para o Bank of Scotland".

Guralnek diz que foi dito para se apresentar como um corretor que fez uma comissão sobre os negócios e enfatizar quanto dinheiro o cliente poderia fazer enquanto minimizava o risco. Na verdade, ao invés de ajudar os clientes a fazer negócios inteligentes, o & # 8220; broker & # 8217; s & # 8221; O verdadeiro interesse era que eles fizessem previsões mal sucedidas e perdessem seu dinheiro.

Guralnek diz que também estava cada vez mais preocupado com o que aconteceu quando os clientes tentaram sair. Isso é quando eles seriam solicitados por uma grande quantidade de papelada.

"Nós dirijamos: 'Você quer retirar? ESTÁ BEM. Precisamos verificar sua identidade antes de poder liberar os fundos. Você precisa nos enviar um fotocópio de sua conta de serviço público, sua carteira de motorista, seu passaporte, seu cartão de crédito "e" # 8212 " requisitos, desnecessário dizer, que não havia sido mencionado quando o cliente colocava dinheiro.

Enquanto o cliente estava reunindo e enviando esta documentação, um agente de "retenção" os chamaria e passaria por seus negócios, supostamente descobrindo o que deu errado e convencendo-os para continuar negociando. "Nós podemos atrasar essa retirada por um longo tempo".

& # 8216; Por que eu deveria ser culpado por vender algo a pessoas estúpidas? Se alguém tem mais de 18 anos e quer álcool, cigarros, uma faca, uma conta de opção binária, é sua própria responsabilidade & # 8217; & # 8212; Postagem do Facebook.

Se um cliente era persistente, diz Guralnek, muitas vezes a empresa deixaria de atender suas chamadas ou enviou-lhes um e-mail dizendo "suspeitamos de fraude" e congelamos todos os seus fundos. Como o cliente não conhecia o nome ou a localização real de seu vendedor, "eles não tinham para onde retornar o dinheiro", explica Guralnek.

Mas a parte mais impressionante do trabalho para o jovem imigrante era pedir dinheiro a pessoas que pareciam pobres e abatidas.

"Eles acreditam que eles estão fazendo algo bom: Eles estão fazendo um investimento, fazendo algo responsável. E eles não são. Toda história está triste. Todas as pessoas têm pessoas dependendo delas. Muitas pessoas estão finalmente recuperando seus pés depois de um problema de drogas ou algo assim ".

O pior foi quando um cliente lhe disse: "Eu estou no hospital".

"Quando alguém diz" eu estou no hospital e eu tenho câncer ", nós deveríamos ainda vendê-los. Mas eu jogaria a venda toda vez. Eu não poderia fazer isso. "

Uma indústria imensa e desonravel.

Se você digitar as palavras "opções binárias" ou "forex" em grupos do Facebook que atendem novos olim (imigrantes para Israel), você encontrará longos segmentos de trocas aquecidas.

"Algum de vocês que está envolvido em opções de Forex / Binário percebe que este é um negócio altamente desregulado que está solicitando jogos de azar a pessoas mal informadas ou não educadas?", Lê uma dessas publicações no popular grupo de Seguros de Tel Aviv.

"Por que eu deveria ser culpado por vender algo às pessoas estúpidas?", Uma mulher responde. "Se alguém tem mais de 18 anos e quer álcool, cigarros, uma faca, uma conta de opção binária, é sua própria responsabilidade".

"Você venderia para sua avó?", O cartaz original dispara de volta.

No grupo "Manter Olim no Movimento de Israel", uma mulher escreve: "Oi tudo, alguém pode me explicar o que são trabalhos binários e Forex e por que as pessoas estão tão anti-trabalhando nessas indústrias em Israel?"

"Este campo é desonroso", lê uma resposta. "Eu fiz isso e eu senti nada além de vergonha e auto-aversão por assediar pessoas que nunca pediram esse chamado e tentando tirar dinheiro com eles que eles provavelmente não voltarão".

"Se você não gosta, não faça isso", lê outro. "Trabalhar o que você sente é um trabalho" honesto ", faça seus 6.000 shekels (cerca de US $ 1.500) por mês, remova o dinheiro e ganhem dinheiro com o resto." Ele continua: "Enquanto o Binário e A indústria de Forex e eu pagamos 50% de impostos sobre nossos salários para pagar seus cuidados de saúde, segurança social e segurança, eu posso falar por todos nós, não precisamos ser julgados ".

Ninguém parece saber exatamente quão grande são as opções binárias e as indústrias cambiais em Israel. Nem mesmo a Autoridade de Valores de Israel, que, quando colocou a questão, respondeu via mensagem de texto: "Como a indústria ainda não está regulamentada, não temos a imagem completa".

Mas as estimativas conservadoras colocam o número de pessoas empregadas na indústria em vários milhares, principalmente em Tel Aviv e seus subúrbios como Herzliya e Ramat Gan, enquanto a receita anual poderia ser de centenas de milhões para mais de US $ bilhões.

Globalmente, o termo forex normalmente se refere ao comércio legítimo de moeda estrangeira, enquanto opções binárias é o nome de um instrumento financeiro. Na linguagem popular israelense, no entanto, as "opções binárias" e "forex" são muitas vezes agrupadas como parte da mesma indústria: quando os israelenses se referem a empresas de forex, muitas vezes eles significam empresas que negociam # 8221; as opções binárias em moedas. Às vezes, os termos Forex e opções binárias são usados ​​indistintamente para se referir a negociações rápidas, tudo ou nada, em uma variedade de ativos.

Em algumas empresas de opções binárias, a plataforma on-line é manipulada para fornecer resultados falsos que garantem que o cliente perca.

O & # 8220; trading & # 8221; O processo pode funcionar da seguinte forma: The Times of Israel foi informado. Tendo transferido seu primeiro depósito financeiro para a empresa, os clientes efetuaram o login em uma plataforma de negociação on-line, conforme os destinatários dos vendedores da empresa, e colocam o dinheiro em uma previsão de que o preço de uma moeda ou commodity irá subir ou diminuir mercados internacionais, digamos, nos próximos cinco minutos. Se o cliente prevê corretamente, ele faz um lucro de uma determinada porcentagem e a empresa perde dinheiro. Se o cliente está errado, ele perde todo o dinheiro que ele colocou no comércio, e a empresa o mantém. Os comerciantes de opções profissionais consultados pelo The Times of Israel disseram que mesmo um gênio financeiro não pode prever com certeza o que, digamos, o preço do ouro fará nos próximos cinco minutos; ao invés de um investimento, a transação é realmente nada mais do que uma aposta.

A falsa representação do jogo como investimento responsável seria bastante ruim.

O que é pior, porém, e flagrantemente corrupto, o Times of Israel foi informado, é que, em algumas empresas, a casa está dobrada. Uma variedade de rodízios são usados. O pagamento potencial para uma previsão correta é complexo, opaco e calculado para minimizar a perda da empresa. Se um bem estiver se comportando de uma maneira previsível & # 8212; digamos, o preço do cobre começa a subir após um terremoto no Chile & # 8212; A empresa tirará esse recurso da plataforma online. Em algumas empresas de opções binárias, a plataforma on-line é manipulada para fornecer resultados falsos que garantem que o cliente perca.

As estimativas do número de opções binárias e de empresas estrangeiras em Israel variam de 20 para várias centenas. O IVC Research Center, uma empresa que fornece informações sobre o setor de tecnologia de Israel, estimou em seu anuário de 2018 que existem 100 empresas comerciais on-line em Israel, cuja esmagadora maioria se enquadra nas categorias de opções forex e binárias. A IVC estima que essas empresas empregam mais de 2.800 pessoas em Israel. No entanto, o anuário afirma: "é difícil avaliar o tamanho real da indústria de comércio financeiro online em Israel", em parte porque a indústria é "discreta" e seu "nexo de Israel é muitas vezes subestimado".

Um relatório de 2018 sobre a indústria de Internet israelense pela incubadora de arranque TheTime diz que das 90 empresas de Internet israelenses que ganham receita de US $ 10 milhões ou mais por ano, 15 eram plataformas de negociação on-line, muitas delas negociando opções cambiais e binárias. Três deles, de acordo com o relatório, foram avaliados com receita de pelo menos US $ 100 milhões por ano. Algumas outras empresas da lista incluíram iForex, bForex, AnyOption, 4XPlace, Optionbit e Banc de Binary. Com base nessas avaliações, a indústria israelense de forex e opções binárias tem volume de negócios anual em centenas de milhões, possivelmente até bilhões, de dólares.

Quantos são fraudulentos?

É alguém adivinhar qual a porcentagem de empresas comerciais financeiras on-line que se dedicam a práticas antiéticas, ilegais e / ou fraudulentas. Uma distinção que muitas pessoas entrevistadas para este artigo desenhou foi entre empresas não regulamentadas e regulamentadas.

Várias empresas grandes e mais conhecidas com fundadores israelenses ou grandes operações de vendas e marketing em Israel são regulamentadas em Chipre, o que lhes dá licença para vender produtos financeiros em países da UE, mesmo que não estejam regulados nesses países.

Muitas empresas de opções forex e binárias que operam em Israel, no entanto, estão desreguladas.

Sam C., um imigrante recente para Israel dos Estados Unidos, descreve sua experiência trabalhando em uma empresa de opções binárias não regulamentadas no verão passado.

Muitos clientes clicaram em um anúncio que procurava ganhar dinheiro em casa. & # 8216; Eles realmente acreditam que eles vão se tornar um milionário apenas fazendo isso & # 8217; & # 8212; ex-funcionário do serviço ao cliente em uma empresa de opções binárias.

"Eles tornam extremamente, extremamente difícil para os clientes retirarem seu dinheiro", diz Sam, que trabalhou no serviço ao cliente e que pediu que seu nome real não fosse usado.

"Você deve encontrar uma cópia da licença do seu motorista, uma cópia da sua conta de serviços públicos e há tantas regras e requisitos. Metade das chamadas que eu tinha que lidar com eram apenas pessoas reclamando, dizendo que faz meses e preciso do meu dinheiro agora. Preciso pagar por isso ou aquilo. Praticamente a empresa simplesmente se recusa a desistir. "

Na verdade, Sam diz que "não pode confirmar" que qualquer cliente tenha recebido o pagamento ou retirou seu dinheiro durante os poucos meses que trabalhou na empresa.

"As pessoas chamavam de volta e ligavam de volta. E, eventualmente, às vezes um dos meus gerentes diria: "Não pegue mais as chamadas dessa pessoa e feche sua conta". Eles diriam: "Nós terminamos com ele e todo o dinheiro não existe" # 8217; t matter. Não tenha mais chamadas dele. '"

A maioria dos clientes da empresa da Sam eram dos Estados Unidos, mesmo que seja contra a lei dos EUA para que as empresas vendam opções binárias aos cidadãos dos EUA dessa maneira. Clientes adicionais eram da África, Qatar e Arábia Saudita. Muitos haviam clicado em um anúncio que procurava "ganhar dinheiro com a casa" ou assistiu a um vídeo que afirmasse revelar estratégias de investimento secretas.

"A maioria parecia ser # 8230; a pessoa estúpida e estúpida ", lembra Sam. "Você nem percebe que pessoas como esta existem fora dos filmes. Eles realmente acreditam que eles se tornarão milionários apenas fazendo isso. E é quase triste. "

Perguntado sobre seus gerentes, Sam disse que eram jovens israelenses que pareciam pensar que era legal arrancar pessoas.

"Eles pareciam ter assistido apenas 'The Wolf of Wall Street' e queria imitar os personagens. A brincadeira que eles teriam, seria como, oh sim, eu não posso acreditar que ele se apaixonou por isso, eu não posso acreditar que você conseguiu investir US $ 300 ".

Sam diz que um dos seus gerentes citaria os campos de vendas de Leonardo DiCaprio do filme, literalmente, ao telefone ao tentar vender opções binárias.

& # 8220; & # 8216; Olá, John. Como vai você hoje? Você enviou a minha empresa algumas semanas atrás, solicitando informações sobre um investimento que teve enorme potencial de reversão com muito poucos riscos negativos, # 8217; Ele citaria a memória. & # 8216; Isso soa um sino? '& # 8221;

"Eu pensei que era um pouco patético, ser honesto, e # 8221; lembra Sam.

Manipulação de software.

Em 2018, os Estados Unidos proibiram a comercialização de opções binárias para seus cidadãos, exceto em um punhado de trocas reguladas. Em seu site, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), uma agência independente do governo dos EUA, alerta os investidores em "esquemas fraudulentos envolvendo opções binárias e suas plataformas de negociação. Esses esquemas alegadamente incluem a recusa de creditar contas de clientes, negando o reembolso do fundo, roubo de identidade e manipulação de software para gerar negociações perdidas ".

"As opções binárias de negociação podem ser uma proposição extremamente arriscada", adverte outra agência reguladora americana, a Autoridade Reguladora da Indústria Financeira (FINRA), em seu site. "Ao contrário de outros tipos de contratos de opções, & # 8221; diz que o FINRA, um SRO que regula empresas de corretagem e mercados de câmbio, e as opções binárias são proposições de tudo ou nada. Quando uma opção binária expira, ele faz uma quantia pré-especificada de dinheiro, ou nada, caso em que o investidor perde seu investimento inteiro. As opções binárias de negociação são tornadas ainda mais arriscadas por esquemas fraudulentos, muitos dos quais se originam fora dos Estados Unidos ".

Em Israel, muitas das chamadas empresas "forex" estão realmente vendendo opções binárias, o que significa que um cliente aposta se uma moeda vai subir ou descer, ao invés de comprar a moeda, Jared K., um ex-corretor de Wall Street explica The Times de Israel.

"O forex tradicional é eu compre às 3,50, eu vendo em 3,60. Forex binário (isto é, forex no mundo das opções binárias) está dizendo 'se ele for para 3.60 eu ganho dinheiro, digamos 20% mais do que eu aposto, mas se ele for 3.50 ou inferior, eu perco . '"

As opções binárias de negociação são tornadas ainda mais arriscadas por esquemas fraudulentos, muitos dos quais se originam fora dos Estados Unidos e # 8212; Aviso do governo dos EUA.

Graham P., que atualmente trabalha em marketing para uma grande empresa de opções binárias com sede em Chipre, em Tel Aviv, diz que conhece os esforços para manipular o software, conforme descrito pelo CFTC & # 8212; intervenção cínica por empresas de opções binárias para garantir que ganhem, o equivalente da indústria de uma roda de roleta manipulada em um cassino.

“I spoke to a guy I was potentially going to work with, and he had actually developed a binary options platform. He said that everyone he met who was interested in buying the platform (to start their own company) wanted him to create a back door.”

By “back door,” Graham means that companies want to be able to manipulate a “trade” at the last minute if a customer or group of customers appears to be winning too much.

“Let’s say 70 percent of the traders are for some reason betting that oil is going to go up. So then the companies say, gee, if we make just 30 percent win, we’ll be able to keep a lot more money. And the algorithm does that. It’s very easy to tell the customer, oh, the line fell a little bit below your position.”

If the customer brings proof that the price of oil did actually go up to where they predicted it would, the company will point them to the fine print, which states that the company has its own algorithms which may differ from real-time.

“Trading rates assigned to the assets on our website are ones at which our company is willing to sell binary options to its customers at the point of sale,” reads a typical disclaimer on many binary options websites. “As such they may not directly correspond to real-time market levels at the point in time at which the sale of options occurs.”

Graham, whose company is regulated in Cyprus, said that in his view “the entire binary options industry is fraudulent.” If so, this represents cynical and systematic corruption on an huge scale — dwarfing such damaging scandals as the illegal hawking of Dead Sea products by Israelis at kiosks in malls around the world — unconscionably allowed to flourish, with extremely grave potential repercussions for Israel.

”For some crazy reason it’s legal in Europe. Individual European nations are letting binary options fly. While countries like the United States smelled the bullshit a long time ago and made it illegal.”

Graham said that on a gut level, he would like to see the industry shut down, but he is worried.

“There’s so much money pouring into the city; it’s literally an industry here — I’m including forex too. It’s probably paying for the subway system we’re installing. Can you imagine thousands of people in Tel Aviv out of work?”

‘A bad reputation’

Chaya Berkowitz, an eight-year veteran of forex companies in Israel, tells the Times of Israel that her own experience in the industry has been good. “I’m not oblivious. I’m aware that it has a very bad reputation. I don’t think that’s 100 percent justified.”

Berkowitz asserts that there are legitimate companies in the industry, and rattles off the names FXCM, Alpari and FXPro, none of which are based in Israel.

“If you have ten forex companies, probably six or seven of them have bad reputations that give the others a bad name. It’s unfortunate because the others take their business seriously and do care about their clients,” she says.

Asked if those six or seven are guilty of fraud, Berkowitz avers, “I wouldn’t say they’re committing fraud. They have the reputation of lying to their clients and misleading advertising. That definitely exists, but there’s a reason some of the big brokerage firms are still around. It’s because they usually play by the book — otherwise they’re not around very long.”

Berkowitz estimates that in legitimate forex companies, two or three out of 10 clients do earn profits and are able to easily withdraw their money. Asked how to tell if a company is legitimate, she says, “I would look for tougher regulation, not a company regulated on some island somewhere but regulated in the UK, the United States or Australia.”

Cyprus, she claims, has become stricter in recent years. “It’s becoming a more recognized regulatory agency.”

“I would also ask friends or other investors. Personal word of mouth is huge. I would do my homework. Look online to see who has a good reputation. I would ask questions when researching a broker. Do I have easy access to my money? Do you offer education?”

Reeling the customers in.

After getting her Master’s degree in Israel and marrying an Israeli, Lynne R., a native Californian, began looking for a job, but was disappointed by what was out there.

“It was really shocking to me, once I started going to companies, to find out how low the salaries were. I wanted to find something more competitive, more similar to what I was earning in the United States.”

People kept mentioning to Lynne that binary options jobs paid well. She posted the fact that she was looking into a couple job sites on Facebook, and “I probably had 25-30 people call to set up interviews.”

Lynne went on five or six interviews, where she learned she was eligible for two types of jobs.

“There’s conversion and retention. For the conversion jobs they were telling me I would make around 15,000 shekels ($3,850) a month and for retention jobs they told me I could make 30,000 to 40,000 ($7,700 to $10,250) a month.”

At each interview, Lynne probed extensively as to the nature of the job. Each company has its own marketing methods, often involving videos that tell the story of a person who learned a secret method of extracting money from the market, she says. One firm told her it attracted customers with a “robot”:

“They said, basically we use a program, which we call a robot. We market it to people and we say it can make small trades for you, like $100 or $200, and there’s an Internet program that will do, you know, some magic and make you a few hundred extra dollars a month.”

Lynne’s job would be to call people who had paid $200 to use the robot, and persuade them to deepen their involvement.

“You call them and you say, well, you have this robot, but it’s not actually that great of a program; it was sold to you by an affiliate of ours. If you want to make serious money, you need to start trading, and we can tell you how. We’re expert traders. All you need to do is make a bigger deposit, and you’ll get a personalized account with us and a personal trader. All you need to do is make a deposit of $500 and we’ll get you started.”

Lynne was eventually offered a retention job, and was enrolled in a two-week training course. The first thing she was told was to never reveal she was calling from Israel. All retention staff were asked to pose as trained brokers working out of a London office. They were required to brush up on the day’s weather in London as well as what was happening in the news.

“You had to make yourself a biography. You needed to think of a business school and say that you went there. You needed to say that you were a trader, that you had worked for either an investment bank or on Wall Street. If you’re a woman, they encourage you to say you’re single because guys will more likely deposit with you. If you’re a guy, you want to have a wife and two kids, because that makes you relate-able.”

The company, she said, was regulated in Cyprus. “The industry is certified for Europe, but you’re not heavily regulated. It’s a way to be EU-accredited without a lot of oversight.” (Finance Magnates, a trade publication of Israel’s online financial trading industry, has written in the past that Cyprus has a reputation for lax regulation.)

‘When we offered training to them, we would share their desktop and walk them through the website. We were told to look around their desktop for pornography or online slots or other signs of compulsive behavior, because that means they’re more likely to make a deposit’ & # 8212; former binary options retention agent.

Lynne says her company’s selling point, which it bragged about, was that it was more ethical than other binary options companies. “If someone asked to withdraw their money we would give it to them within 48 hours,” she says.

When Lynne started playing with her company’s binary options platform, she realized it was fun and addictive, “almost like a gambling game.”

There was lots of adrenaline.

“If you put money in your investment account today, it might give you 3 to 6 percent returns. In binary you see 70 percent coming in right away.”

If conversion agents were expected to get a client to make their first deposit, retention agents like Lynne were tasked with bringing in the big money. The first step was to size up the customer.

“They told us to look up people’s homes on Google Maps to see how rich they seemed and to check their credit card information to see if they had gold or platinum status. Also, when we offered training to them, we would share their desktop and walk them through the website. We were told to [abuse that access and] look around their desktop for pornography or online slots or other signs of compulsive behavior, because that means they’re more likely to make a deposit.”

“You call someone and you tell them my name is Jane Smith, I’m calling from London where I’m an investment banker for this amazing firm. I’m calling to talk to you about how much you actually want to make. We see that you’ve invested $300 but we both know $300 is not going to make you anything. So what is it you actually want to make in a year?”

“So people would say, ‘I want to make $100,000.’ ‘I want to buy a house’ or ‘I want to travel.’”

“They tell you something that they want and then you say, ‘so it will probably take you 6-8 months to achieve that. If you want to achieve it you need to trade every day. I’m going to be working with you. I’m going to give you information about which picks to make every day.”

Lynne said the “broker” would check in with customers regularly, encouraging them, teaching them about the market, and offering tips. When the broker chose a stock for them to bet on, the stock would often perform as promised. When they got on the platform and made their own picks, they started losing. Then the broker would come back and help them make some good calls, and they would win again.

“So basically you come across as this really great trader, but in reality you are just trying to make the volume of trades be as high as possible.”

The next step, recalls Lynne, was to ask for a $10,000 deposit.

“Customers usually balk and say ‘There’s no way I want to deposit $10,000.’ So you pressure them and say ‘If you’re not really serious about making money, then why are we talking right now?’ Traders try everything. Some are really sweet, some try to identify with them, some try to make them feel awkward — whatever the technique is that gets them to deposit. The favorite technique is to say, ‘If you deposit $5,000, I will give you a $5,000 bonus.’ Customers hear that and they say ‘That’s insane. I’m going to deposit.’”

But the bonus, explains Lynne, is a trap.

“You’re not allowed to withdraw any of your money until you use that bonus money something like 30 to 40 times over. Let’s say I give you a $1,000 bonus. You would need to trade that until you made at least $30,000 profit off of it, and then you can withdraw your money. But you will never get to that amount. Let’s say you make $10,000 off of it and you say you want to withdraw, in the contract it will say you can’t withdraw. You can take your original money out, but you can’t take the bonus or the money you earned with the bonus.”

“So clients get stuck in the system, because they don’t want to lose all their money, and by the time they trade 30 times the amount of the bonus, they’ve lost everything.”

The longer you trade, the more money you lose, says Lynne. “You can’t go that far typically and be successful.”

However, Lynne says again, with her company, if you resisted the temptation to take the bonus, and if you put in a request, the company would send you your money.

“They really bragged about the fact that they were good about giving people their money right away. In fact, they encouraged people to take small withdrawals. If a customer had $10,000, they would say, why don’t you take $2,000 and take your wife on a small trip? It’s very calculated with how much they’re giving out and how much leeway to try to give the customers.”

Lynne quit her binary options job soon after the training course because she said she couldn’t stomach taking the savings of “schoolteachers and truck drivers.” Asked whether she thought what she had been assigned to do was unethical or illegal, she replies: “It was certainly unethical. When I tell people about this job, they are shocked. They say, that could never be legal, there’s no way Israel would ever allow that.”

‘Economic terrorism’

In November 2018 a man by the name of Ariel Marom, who described himself as a former employee of several companies in the forex industry, sent a strongly worded letter to both the Finance and the Ethics committees of the Knesset, as reported in Israel’s financial daily Globes.

“I am calling on the regulator in charge of banking services and the Knesset Finance Committee to immediately take action to stop the wave of plundering, theft, fraud, money laundering, and crime on an international scale that is managed and operated in Israel that is hurting thousands of customers around the world.”

Marom described the forex industry as “economic terrorism” targeting the citizens of many countries.

“When this information becomes public knowledge through investigative reports by the media, which is bound to happen sooner or later, Israel’s status in the world will be damaged and it will unleash a wave of hatred toward the Jewish people and Israel, causing tremendous damage.”

‘When this information becomes public knowledge through investigative reports by the media… Israel’s status in the world will be damaged and it will unleash a wave of hatred toward the Jewish people and Israel, causing tremendous damage’ & # 8212; letter sent to Knesset committees.

Marom said in the letter that he had been searching for a job in recent months and as a Russian speaker had interviewed with forex companies that operate in Israel and target customers abroad. He said he was surprised at the sheer magnitude of the fast-growing industry.

“There are hundreds of jobs currently available to Arabic, Russian, English, Spanish and French speakers as these companies seek new workers for their expanding departments.”

Marom added that after years in the traditional banking industry, he was shocked at the practices he witnessed in several forex companies.

“In the absence of any regulation, they are simply robbing customers. Many people compare forex to a casino, but it’s worse than a casino. A casino hands you your winnings immediately. Forex companies — and I’m talking about most of them — simply do not allow people to withdraw money.”

Marom goes on: “Many forex customers have no idea that the company operates from Israel, especially when we’re talking about the Arabic-speaking desks. Their complaints never reach our justice system and so the industry is not exposed. How is it possible that this has been happening for years, with no local regulation? What happens when thousands of Turks, Russians, Spaniards, Italians and French figure out that the scam they fell for was carried out from here, in Israel? Are our regulators waiting for synagogues to start blowing up all over the world to shut this thing down?”

It is not clear what the Knesset Finance Committee did in response to Marom’s letter. The Times of Israel tried to track Marom down, but the CEO of FeeX, a high-tech startup he used to blog for, said he had not heard from Marom for a few years and had no contact information. Marom’s LinkedIn profile placed him at a high-tech company in Brazil where no one who answered the phone seemed to speak English. A phone call to an “Ariel Marom” listed near Haifa was answered by a woman who said her husband is an astronomer, not a finance professional.

“You’re the third journalist who has called looking for Ariel Marom in the last two weeks,” she said. “Now I’m curious.”

The Times of Israel asked for the help of SixGill, a cybersecurity high-tech firm that specializes in the dark web, to track down Marom, but after a brief automated search, Tommy Ben-avi, a senior analyst at Sixgill, concluded that either “Ariel Marom is not his real name or he doesn’t want to be found.”

The cyber intelligence company did, however, make some interesting observations about the forex and binary options industries. Ben-avi mentioned several companies known to be operating from Israel.

“This industry is a bit shady. It’s hard to get to the owners and CEOs of some of these companies. Most of the time, when you have a company that large, you can see the owner, you can see the shareholders.”

Ben-avi conducted an automatic search with a system that scours hundreds of thousands of sites and closed dark web forums. “It seems like they’re trying to hide their identity. Maybe a few companies have the same owner, and they want to hide that fact,” he mused. “Or maybe their business is not 100 percent legitimate.”

How it’s done on Wall Street.

Jared K., a licensed stockbroker from the United States who now lives in Tel Aviv, says that he sees several problems with the local forex and binary options industries.

“On Wall Street, brokers are regulated, transactions are regulated, the money is regulated. Where is it coming from and where is it going? There are rules as to how someone can access money in a claim.”

‘I am shocked that Israel hasn’t shut this down’ & # 8212; US-licensed stockbroker who lives in Tel Aviv.

Furthermore, says Jared, in the United States, a license to sell securities or handle client investments would require a person to meet certain ethical standards. If they don’t look out for the best interest of their client’s investments, it is a criminal offense.

“On Wall Street I can’t put someone in an investment that doesn’t fit them. That is fraudulent. If I called up your parents and said put money in this investment and they lost it all, in theory I could be arrested and go to jail.

“Binary doesn’t have that, there are no repercussions. What happens if someone loses money? Nothing.”

“I am shocked that Israel hasn’t shut this down,” he sums up.

A product that invites fraud.

Yaron Zelekha, Israel’s former accountant-general, became known as the country’s foremost whistle-blower in 2007 when he exposed the financial improprieties of a sitting prime minister, Ehud Olmert.

‘I personally would not advise any Israeli to trade with any of these companies’ & # 8212; Yaron Zelekha, Israel’s former accountant-general.

Zelekha told The Times of Israel that he doesn’t want to tar all its players with the same brush, but that binary options and some instruments related to forex are designed in a way that creates a strong incentive for fraud.

“There is a very wide information gap between the public and these players, and they are exploiting it to their advantage. The broker is not giving you a service like in a bank; he is personally betting against you. This is a flagrant conflict of interest, because you’re betting on something, and the person reporting the outcome wants you to lose.”

Such circumstances invite fraud, says Zelekha, and “there is no small number of companies that simply defraud the customer. Sometimes that fraud is very sophisticated.”

Asked whether the entire industry should be shut down, Zelekha responds, “There is no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater, although I personally would not advise any Israeli to trade with any of these companies.”

What the industry does need, he says, is real-time regulation. He says there is software that can now do real-time monitoring of a company’s transactions.

“The Israel Securities Authority (ISA) must have real-time access to these companies’ computer systems.”

Zelekha says the ISA has fought a long battle to regulate the online financial trading industry. “They deserve credit for their efforts, although the regulation won’t be effective if it isn’t done in real time.”

ISA: ‘We probably won’t allow binary options’

The Israel Securities Authority is housed in a 1920s Eclectic-style building in one of Tel Aviv’s loveliest neighborhoods, near the stock exchange. Itzik Shurki, director of the ISA’S Exchange and Trading Platforms Supervision, is a soft-spoken man, but he has harsh words for binary options.

Shurki says a new law to regulate online financial trading industries went into effect in May 2018. The companies that wanted to continue to offer their products to Israeli customers had to request a license from the ISA. Twenty-one companies requested licenses. One was disqualified, because its controlling shareholder, Aviv Talmor, had fled to Cyprus to escape arrest for alleged financial misdeeds. Talmor has since returned to Israel and is currently under house arrest. Two other companies withdrew their applications, leaving 18. Of these, four are primarily binary options companies, while the others seek to offer other types of CFDs, or contracts for differences, as well.

‘With binary options we’ve already informed the companies that our intention is probably not to approve this product’ & # 8212; Itzik Shurki of the Israel Securities Authority.

Almost a year later, none of the applicants has been approved. Shurki says that the industry is currently in a transition period while the ISA reviews the applicants. During this period, the 18 companies have permission to continue to operate.

“If we decide yes, they will become fully regulated companies; if we decide no, they will have to stop their operations.”

Which way is the ISA leaning? “With binary options we’ve already informed the companies that our intention is probably not to approve this product. Its basis is problematic. Because ultimately — I don’t want to use the word ‘gambling’ because it is a financial product — but in the way it is offered and in the short time frame, and with all its complexity, in our view it brings it closer to a guessing game than a financial product where you can evaluate its worth.”

CFDs, or contracts for differences, a high-risk financial instrument that is also banned in the United States except on registered security exchanges, will be allowed in Israel, says Shurki. However, Shurki says CFDs will be regulated in real-time and aggressive or deceptive sales tactics will be rendered illegal. The ISA will monitor the prices of every product offered to make sure they are transparent and fair; traders will need to be licensed; and traders will also be prohibited from offering advice or tips to their customers.

“You can’t be in a position to give advice when their earnings are your loss,” Shurki explains.

This all sounds quite impressive. Once the ISA makes it decision, one might be forgiven for thinking, the binary options fraudsters will be out of business. But there’s a catch — a great big catch that potentially excludes the overwhelming proportion of binary options trading from effective supervision in Israel: The new regulations apply only to companies that target Israeli customers. If a binary options or forex company targets customers abroad exclusively, it will not be regulated by the ISA. Thus, to ensure that the new law not apply to them, companies need only exclude Israeli clients.

A quick visit to the websites of several binary options firms does indeed prompt messages saying the service is not available to Israelis.

Shurki says he is aware that the new regulations will not solve the problem of call centers that are defrauding people abroad, but says that such activity is not under the ISA’s jurisdiction, in the same way that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) only protects British citizens and the CFTC only protects Americans.

“If an American company tried to sell securities to Israelis, it would be our job to protect our citizens, not the Americans’ responsibility,” he explains, although he adds that the ISA does have very good information exchanges with its foreign counterparts.

Yes, but when an Israeli company steals from people in another country, is that not a crime?

“It is a crime,” says Shurki, but it’s not a crime for his authority to investigate. “There’s no such thing as a vacuum of authority. If an Israeli commits fraud or misrepresentation, that’s the purview of the Israel Police.”

The French connection.

Perhaps nowhere is the hand-wringing and acrimony over Israel-based forex and binary options trading more anguished than in the community of French Jews living in Israel.

In January of this year, a cover story of the French-language “Israel Magazine,” a monthly glossy magazine and website serving the French-speaking community in Israel and the Diaspora, was titled, “Forex, is it kosher?”

‘A generation of young people is in the process of perverting themselves into worshipers of the golden calf’ & # 8212; journalist in a piece warning about Forex.

In the introduction to the piece, journalist Andre Darmon writes, “The point of this article is not to point a finger at some of our fellow citizens or co-religionists, because the phenomenon is global, but to raise awareness that a generation of young people is in the process of perverting themselves into worshipers of the golden calf. And that earning a living does not mean everything is permissible!”

“These call centers hire lost young souls,” writes journalist Ilana Mazouz in Alliance, a French-Jewish Internet magazine, “many who do not speak Hebrew or English, and for a short time provide the illusion of a normal life in Israel.”

Some rabbis have forbidden people from working in the industry, calling it “theft,” while rabbinic lectures on the Internet in French bear titles like “Forex, dirty work and Amalek.”

Again, numbers are hard to come by for how many young French speakers are employed in the industry. Didier F., a French-Jewish businessman, told The Times of Israel that after he graduated from the IDC-Herzliya, many of his fellow students were recruited by forex and binary options companies.

Didier asserts that many owners of forex websites are members of a French-Jewish community of conmen who are hiding from French law enforcement in Israel, where the police, he alleges, don’t bother them over-much.

As previously reported in The Times of Israel, about 10 recent immigrants from France were charged last year with cyber crimes and telephone scams, while France has reportedly sent Israel 70 additional formal requests for judicial assistance for cases of suspected fraud. A movie was recently made in France about one of these alleged fraudsters. The movie is called “Je Compte sur Vous, French for “I’m counting on you.”

“I love when they say French aliyah has increased so much; now it’s 7,000 people,” says Didier. “It’s great, I’m happy about it. But then you see that many of them are working in the forex industry or binary options industry. You go to Tel Aviv today, when you say to someone in the French community, I work in finance, they immediately think that you work in this shit.”

Adds Didier: “Even if it’s a small amount of money, they’re stealing money from poor people. It’s destroying families. Some people have killed themselves.”

According to a report in Le Nouvel Observateur, a French news weekly, l’Autorite des Marches Financiers, the French securities authority, received a staggering 4,500-plus complaints about forex and binary options fraud in 2018. Those forex and binary options complaints constituted 37 percent of all complaints about securities fraud received by the authority in that year. The majority of the forex transactions that prompted those complaints originated in Israel, the article claims.

What does Google have to do with this?

There is yet another piece of the binary options empire, and it relates to the way Israeli firms manage to reassure customers of their ostensible integrity, via Google.

Let’s say you are a potential binary options customer. A company has approached you about making a deposit, but you are not sure, so you decide to do your homework. You Google, “Are binary options legitimate?”

You will get a list of results, one or two of which may be fraud warnings from the US regulatory body, the CFTC. The first few pages of search results, however, are dominated by sites that purport to warn you away from “scam” binary options sites and steer you toward legitimate ones. Upon closer examination, however, many of these “helpful” sites themselves turn out to be affiliates of the binary options companies.

Next, you might Google, “Are binary options legal in the United States?” Once again, many of the top results turn out to be websites affiliated with the industry itself, rather than an objective source of information. Some of these sites offer misleading statements and half-truths like “There are at this moment no laws both on the federal and state level that forbid US citizens from trading binary options online.”

US law banning binary options is directed at the companies that market them, not the customers who buy them, so there is some truth in that statement. However, the SEC and CFTC clearly warn investors that “they may not have the full safeguards of the federal securities and commodities laws if they purchase unregistered binary options that are not subject to the oversight of U. S. regulators.”

Many countries, including Canada, publish updated lists of unregistered binary options companies that solicit customers in Canada in violation of the law. A recent Canadian list is here. The list features 37 companies. The Times of Israel went to the website of each company on this list. Some were no longer in operation. Others blocked users from Israel (presumably to avoid trouble with the Israel Securities Authority). One now hosts a porn site. Most were hard to pin down to a geographic location. However, based on first - and secondhand sources, The Times of Israel suspects that more than half of these companies, if not the overwhelming majority, operate from Israel.

“Investing with offshore companies operating outside of Canada can be risky and is a common red flag of investment fraud,” the Canadian Securities Authority warns. Yet if you Google “Canada, binary options, blacklist,” once again, many of the top search results appear to be industry-affiliated sites, some of which recommend as legitimate the very same sites that are on the Canadian government’s blacklist.

Bryan Seely, a Seattle-based cybersecurity expert, tells The Times of Israel he is not surprised to hear of these Google search results, which, he explains, show Google’s search engine being manipulated.

“Google doesn’t make a point of censoring stuff; you can find drugs, you can find steroids, you don’t have to go to the Silk Road. Google indexes the Internet and ranks things where it ranks them.”

Asked why, if this industry allegedly has so many victims, their voices don’t show up higher in Google rankings, Seely says, “the victims aren’t as good at promoting what happened to them as the people in the binary options industry are at promoting the stuff they’re selling. The victims aren’t all going to each other’s pages” — so each victim’s page would typically have only a low Google ranking.

Seely, who has been battling to raise public awareness of massive search engine manipulation in the locksmith industry — another area, incidentally, where systemic fraud in the United States, with large-scale Israeli involvement, has caused scandal in recent years — adds, “here’s the underlying issue: Is Google safe to use? Or Bing?”

What he’s really asking, when it comes to the binary options industry, is whether searching Google will lead a potential investor who fears being defrauded to the independent, credible and accurate information he is seeking. The answer, it would appear, is no.

Search engine optimization and the secret of success.

Over the last decade, Israel earned the nickname “start-up” nation for its high-tech prowess. But not many people are aware that the country is also a global leader in online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), an expertise it acquired in the “shadow industries” of porn, online gambling and binary options, according to TheTime’s 2018 report on the Israeli Internet industry. That expertise has plainly been applied by fraudulent binary options firms, whose affiliated sites show up high in Google searches — sending unsuspecting and naive clients their way.

Yoni S., an Israeli high-tech entrepreneur and SEO consultant, explains that without effective SEO, a fraudulent local player remains local, defrauding perhaps a few hundred victims in his vicinity. But with the power of Internet marketing, the scammer’s reach can go global.

The Times of Israel sent Google a request for an interview about the manipulation of its search platform by allegedly fraudulent businesses in the binary options industry, but Google did not respond.

What do the police have to say?

The Times of Israel contacted the Israel Police repeatedly to ask them about alleged fraud in the forex and binary options industries. Their answers underlined how law enforcement is struggling to grapple with the soaring, fast-moving challenge of Internet crime.

“If there are investigations going on into fraud, etc., I don’t have information on this. If someone has filed a complaint to the police, then let me know,” Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld replied.

A second police spokesperson, Luba Samri, told The Times of Israel, “We got lost in your question. Please focus it more. Who filed a complaint against whom?”

Finally, The Times of Israel called a third spokesperson, Merav Lapidot, and asked her what the police are doing about suspected fraud on a vast scale in the forex and binary options industries in Israel.

“This is something you’re claiming. If no one has complained about it, there is no issue. You want us to check every company in Israel and see if by chance they are committing crimes?”

Told that people who worked inside the industry have described widespread potentially fraudulent behavior on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars, affecting tens of thousands of people, Lapidot replied: “But no one has complained. I don’t know what happens in every company. That’s not our job. You could start a business tomorrow selling jewelry over the Internet. Will the police come to investigate your business?”

To the suggestion that there may be thousands of victims abroad, Lapidot said, “If there is someone who complained, we need to check that specific complaint. We’re not going to check a whole issue.”

Is it possible that an entire industry, much of it allegedly corrupt, is slipping through the cracks between Shurki’s Israel Securities Authority, which doesn’t handle crimes hatched in Israel whose victims are abroad, and the police, which won’t act unless specific complaints are filed with them?

Zvika Rubins, a PR consultant for the Israel Securities Authority, says the law simply hasn’t caught up with the dubious and crooked methods people have devised to make money on the Internet.

“When you talk about bits and bytes, it’s not that simple. Was there a crime? Where did it take place? For instance, let’s say you have a company and it’s incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and its servers are in India and it has a trading room in Israel. Is it an Israeli company? I don’t know.”

Rubins, who stresses that he is not an expert on criminal law, muses that if someone in Israel commits a crime against someone in, say, France, over the Internet, then it might be the responsibility of the French to open an investigation, trace the crime to Israel, and approach the Israeli police about it.

Yoni S., the SEO expert, is outraged by this approach. “In Israel it’s against the law to murder, but if I establish a company in Israel that murders people through the Internet in Malaysia, that’s okay?”

Seely sees the problem as extremely serious and growing: “We’re becoming a global culture and global economy, and physical borders don’t exist on the Internet. It’s become easier to scam people all over the world. We have no protections in place to prevent it and it’s getting worse.”

“It’s a jungle out there,” says Yoni, referring to the fact that people do all sorts of things on the Internet that would be illegal within their own borders.

“The Internet came in, no one has passed any regulation yet, and now there is an opportunity to make tons of money in the jungle.”

A response from inside the industry.

Tali Yaron-Eldar, Israel’s income tax commissioner from 2002 to 2004, in 2007 founded eTrader, a binary options firm that targets Israelis, along with Shay Ben-Asulin, who also co-founded AnyOption, one of Israel’s largest binary options companies with revenues in the tens of millions of dollars. In 2018, Ben-Asulin was indicted by the United States for securities fraud, and last month he was convicted of fraud by an Israeli court for helping an Israeli credit card company, ICC-CAL, illegally clear billions of shekels of charges from porn, binary options and gambling websites, as well as conceal the number of canceled transactions. For his crimes, Ben-Asulin will do five months of community service and pay a fine of less than $1 million.

In a 2018 interview (Hebrew) with Israel’s Channel 10 news, when asked if she was discomfited by the fact of young demobilized soldiers and old pensioners losing all their money trading binary options, Yaron-Eldar responded: “Ask the people who invested and lost their money. All of them knew they were entering something risky.”

The Times of Israel contacted Yaron-Eldar to ask her about alleged fraud within the binary options industry.

To the extent that this is true, she said, it applies to unregulated companies.

“The companies with a license are very careful,” ela diz. “AnyOption [a company she is associated with] has a Cypriot license. It is very careful to follow the law. It is being watched all the time.”

In Yaron-Eldar’s view, and contrary to the opinions of other people interviewed for this article, Cypriot regulation is very tough, on a par with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Asked about the fact that the Canadian government has included AnyOption on a list of companies illegally soliciting Canadian citizens, Yaron-Eldar replies, “Not that I am aware of.”

In fact, Yaron-Eldar insists that AnyOption is not an Israeli company at all.

“AnyOption does not have offices in Tel Aviv. It’s a company that operates from Cyprus.”

Indeed, a perusal of anyoption reveals no references to Israel. Nevertheless, it is no secret that hundreds of employees go to work each day at AnyOption’s offices at 38 Habarzel Street in Tel Aviv’s Ramat Hachayal neighborhood. How does she explain this discrepancy?

“They’re not working for the same company,” ela diz. “They’re working for AnyOption Israel, not AnyOption Cyprus. The company they work for is a service provider to the company in Cyprus.”

In other words, AnyOption (like many other binary options companies with similar corporate structures) is not in fact an Israeli company, according to Yaron-Eldar’s reasoning. This means that it, and many others like it, is subject to Cypriot law and regulation, not Israeli law. Since much of the regulated part of the binary options industry is subject to Cypriot regulation, the honesty or dishonesty of those firms may hinge on the strength and honesty of Cypriot law enforcement.

Where are the victims?

The Times of Israel contacted the FBI to see if anyone had complained about forex or binary options call centers in Israel, but the agency did not respond.

ASIC, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, replied in an email, “We don’t comment on operational matters, this includes confirming or denying if we have received complaints about a particular matter or not.”

A French government spokeswoman, however, confirmed that France has been having problems with forex fraud emanating from Israel.

“Yes, there are some cases of fraud, as you say,” ela disse. “Forex is not per se a fraud but it can be used for fraudulent objectives. We have had some cases between France and Israel, and we are in touch with the Israeli authorities about this. There is a very good cooperation between the two countries and the two services on this issue.”

Back to Australia.

Ariel Marom, the mysteriously disappeared former forex employee who wrote that anguished 2018 letter to the Knesset, warned of the fallout when the extent of the corruption in the binary options industry in Israel is exposed.

“What happens when thousands of Turks, Russians, Spaniards, Italians and French figure out that the scam they fell for was carried out from here, in Israel?” he asked in his letter. “Are our regulators waiting for synagogues to start blowing up all over the world to shut this thing down?”

Dan Guralnek, the Australian immigrant, has drawn his own conclusions. “This amount of dishonesty would never be allowed to exist in Australia,” ele diz. “They would shut down [the industry] overnight.”

Guralnek recently became engaged to an Israeli woman. But he hopes to persuade her to move back to Australia with him, in part because of the high cost of living that drove him to work in binary options in the first place, and in part because of the corruption he has encountered.

“Now I see corruption everywhere I look,” ele diz. “Anywhere where there’s no light shining on the corruption in this country, it feels like it’s growing.”

CoursTorah, the website of a Francophone synagogue near Tel Aviv’s Hamedina Square, has a page on its website warning against the binary options industry, headlined “Stop the Scam!”

“Many people you know work directly or indirectly for these scam websites,” reads the page, warning that binary options and the majority of forex companies operating from Israel are fraudulent. It advises congregants to “run away from these companies!”

And it issues an evidently all too necessary reminder: “Let us remember the eighth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not steal.'”

13 sickening truths about Israel’s huge binary options fraud.

Op-ed: Far too slowly, Israel is waking up to the massive theft being perpetrated worldwide by a criminal industry shamefully allowed to fester here. It's been snowballing for a decade. Every day, it ruins more lives.

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David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2018) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).

Slowly, far, far, too slowly, Israel is waking up to the gigantic fraud being perpetrated from here by binary options crooks: to the scale of the crime; to the heartlessness of the criminals; to the staggering lack of will by the regulatory authorities, the police and the political leadership to tackle what may well be the single greatest corruption scandal in the history of modern Israel (in terms of how much money is being fleeced from duped “investors” all over the world).

The Times of Israel has been writing about the fraud, article after article, for the past three months. We were not the first Israeli media outlet to cover it; we are the only Israeli media outlet that has made exposing the despicable industry an ongoing editorial priority. Slowly, as I said, some parts of the Hebrew media are starting to catch up.

Most notably in this regard, Israel’s Channel 2 — the nation’s most watched news broadcast — last week carried a lengthy report on the crime. Its reporters, commendably, interviewed workers in this industry of theft who made plain that there are no innocents among the thousands, possibly tens of thousands who work for the corrupt companies, since rookie trainees are told on day one that they’ll have to leave their consciences at the door. Commendably, too, the report included an on-camera interview in which an insider acknowledged that 96% of customers lose all their money. What the TV report failed to state explicitly is that, far from investment, or even regulated gambling, the industry is engaged in outright theft — a theft it perpetrates largely, though not solely, by allegedly rigging its trading platforms.

For those of you who are hearing for the first time about the vast and pernicious binary options fraud industry that Israel hosts, and that Israel’s authorities have refused to tackle, I want to summarize the key evils. For those of you who have read our coverage to date, this makes for a handy, grim recap.

1. Terms like “binary options” and “forex” trading can have legitimate connotations. In the Israeli context, however, “binary options” has largely been co-opted by a fraudulent industry that has snowballed in the past decade and become increasingly reckless and vicious, dedicated to stealing as much money as possible from as many people as possible, all over the world, by duping them into thinking they are making potentially lucrative short-term investments. A rare public summation of the Israeli industry was provided at a recent conference by one expert, Yoni Avital, about 6 minutes into this video clip.)

2. Earlier this year, the flaccid Israel Securities Authority, which is supposed to regulate the country’s financial trading environment, finally managed to stir itself into banning the fleecing of Israelis by the local fraudulent binary options firms. In other words, the industry today, according to Israel’s own regulations, can only steal from people abroad. A shameful reality, that is, of Israelis stealing from foreigners with the tacit consent of the Israeli government.

An ex-employee told us just last week that her company turns a monthly profit of $10 million, or $120 million per year.

3. The scale of the industry is hard to assess, but it is vast. The Times of Israel believes there are well over 100 Israeli or Israel-connected binary options companies (many of them trading under multiple names) operating out of office buildings in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Herzliya, Caesarea and beyond. We know that many of these firms employ hundreds of people. We have been told by some insiders that the industry employs thousands of Israelis; others speak of tens of thousands. An ex-employee told us just last week that her particular requirement was to make 150 calls per day to “leads” & # 8212; potential clients around the world, from a data file supplied by the firm — and to bring in $100,000 in deposits each month, a target she easily surpassed. She said her company turns a monthly profit of $10 million, or $120 million per year. Insiders have given us estimates ranging from $1 billion to $10 billion for the annual profit of the industry. By way of comparison, Israel’s total annual exports are in the order of $65 billion.

4. The industry is not unsophisticated. When speaking to clients, the salespeople whose job is to persuade them to part with their money use false names, cite false qualifications and expertise, claim to be in false locations — telling whatever cover story is most effective in building trust. The single goal of the sales and retention crooks is to persuade the mark to believe in them, and then to entrust them with real money. That’s why immigrants, especially from French - and English-speaking countries, are so sought-after by the Israeli firms. (Israeli Arabs too; the Israeli firms are ripping off the Arab world as well.) And the more unscrupulous the better.

The technical coding involved in rigging the platforms was described to The Times of Israel by one ex-employee who actually wrote some of the code.

The online trading platforms to which the marks are given access look legitimate. In fact, however, the platforms are allegedly rigged by the fraudulent firms, so that the numbers flashing across the screen can be manipulated to ensure that the customer cannot profit. The fraudsters can and do rig the numbers so that customers think they are making money on their trades for a while, and are thus inveigled into depositing still more; the losses come when the victim is deemed to have been milked dry. The technical coding involved in rigging the platforms was described to The Times of Israel by one ex-employee who actually wrote some of the code. Again, therefore, this is not investing. With these fraudulent firms and their duplicitous sales teams, nobody is purchasing a legitimate, conventional option to buy or sell a commodity. The clients, rather, are being played for fools — their funds manipulated as they are expertly squeezed and then cynically discarded.

5. The big-fish companies that supply the trading platforms to smaller binary options firms are therefore central to the fraud. In some cases, we have been told, these big-fish firms charge a 20% fee to the smaller firms for the use of the platform. In one case, we have been told, one such supplier has recently been given a government grant to expand its operations to a major world power with which Israel is working to boost trade — the government using our taxpayer shekels, unwittingly, to finance the potential further global expansion of Israeli binary options fraud.

6. I mentioned above that some of the fraudsters have become increasingly reckless as the years have passed and nobody has come to put them in jail. That recklessness now sees some firms not even bothering to present the appearance of normal trading, but rather, when customers have been fully fleeced, informing them that their money has been lost on unsuccessful trades made on their behalf. More reckless still, when customers become tenacious in demanding their money back, some firms simply stop taking their calls. (Other ruses employed to separate victims from their money are described here.) The false names and untraceable phone numbers mean that the victims have a hard time tracking down the crooks.

The Times of Israel has been told of powerful lobbying efforts by well-connected individuals to ensure that the industry is allowed to continue to flourish.

7. The industry is facilitated by a range of side industries. There are the SEO (search engine optimization) experts, who ensure that the thieving firms appear high on Google search result pages — readily available to potential customers. The SEO experts also ensure that websites purporting to help would-be investors with information on binary options — websites that are themselves often set up and maintained by the self-same corrupt firms — pop up high on Google, too. Then there are the email experts, sending out attractive “make money from home” and “boost your savings” offers worldwide — producing the leads. There are the production teams, writers and actors making video ads for the industry, deceptively extolling the virtues of this expert and that revolutionary trading platform. There are the technical writers, preparing content for the firms’ websites and other marketing materials. Abysmally, reputable Israeli organizations have helped the corrupt binary options industry to attract staffers — in some cases unwittingly. But nobody, at this stage, can credibly claim ignorance. Since we began highlighting the fraud, several official organizations and private manpower firms, to their credit, have begun barring binary options firms from using their recruitment services or advertising on their sites. Some, but not all.

8. The world’s banking and credit card systems are also part of the equation. We have been told about some credit card firms that are scrupulous in protecting their customers from the fraudsters, and others that are less so. The same goes for banks. The fraudulent firms accept initial deposits via credit card, but much prefer to fleece their marks of larger sums via bank transfer. A number of banks, some of their names known to us, play a leading role in this process. The worst word a fraudulent binary options firm ever wants to hear is “chargeback” & # 8212; an effort by a duped customer to get his credit card payment returned because he has been ripped off. When requests for chargebacks mount, the credit card firms get suspicious, and that spells trouble for the fraudsters, who will therefore go to extreme lengths to avoid such repayments.

Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of young Israelis get up and go to work each day to commit robbery.

9. The binary options fraud is by no means the only dismal dark side of Israel’s start-up nation success. Unscrupulous Israeli firms we have come across use SEO and other expertise to cheat and steal in other online areas. With the possible exception of online gambling, another cash cow with plenty of Israeli involvement whose integrity and regulation we have yet to investigate, however, nothing remotely compares to the scale and cynicism of binary options fraud.

10. When it comes to the impact on the victims, the personal consequences of this mammoth fraud can only be imagined. We were told by one ex-salesman that he quit the industry, finally, after years of silencing his conscience, when he heard a colleague call a client whose wife answered the phone and said her husband was not available; he had just committed suicide because of their binary options losses. Other ex-traders told us they knew of other suicides. We have spoken to victims who told us they were considering suicide, and to victims who told us they have had to sell their homes and cannot see how they will ever recover financially. Again, were these victims just foolish gamblers, addicted to self-destructive financial decisions, one would have less sympathy. But these are trusting people who had been sweet-talked into parting with their savings by men and women using false names, making false promises, claiming to be enabling them to make wise investments, and then stealing their money.

11. The Israel Securities Authority, belatedly protecting Israelis from their fellow citizen-crooks, claims to lack the authority to prevent Israeli firms stealing from people abroad — an interpretation of its mandate that some experts contend is incorrect. The Israel Police, for its part, has told overseas victims that it cannot handle complaints by email or phone, and that they need to fly to Israel and register a complaint at an Israeli police station. An effort by former Knesset member Einat Wilf to have the industry shut down went nowhere. The Times of Israel has been told of powerful lobbying efforts by well-connected individuals to ensure that the industry is allowed to continue to flourish. The Times of Israel has also been told horror stories about corruption in high places ostensibly central to the failure of the authorities to intervene, but we have no hard evidence of this.

12. While the Israeli authorities have failed to take action, however, class action suits are now being prepared in London, raids have been taking place involving Israeli suspects in Romania, French investigators have visited Israel to probe complaints on behalf of French nationals, and Canadian regulators are digging into the corrupt Israeli firms. The US, Canada, Australia and other countries issue watchlists and warning notices that highlight Israeli firms. Overseas media is taking increasing note. The implications for Israel are grave. Israel has attracted an enviable reputation as a stable environment for business and finance. The dizzying scale of the binary options fraud, and the appalling failure of the Israeli authorities to tackle it, constitute a tangible threat to that hard-won reputation, and thus to ongoing international investment and business development in Israel.

13. If that were not serious enough, however, there is the matter of morals and ethics — the bitter reality that Israel is a world leader in a cynical industry of theft. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of largely young Israelis get up and go to work each day to commit robbery. Some of them brag about it. Some of them love ringing that bell and basking in the applause of their fellow crooks when they extract a big new deposit from some dupe on the phone. Some of them brag that they earn more than their parents. They love the foreign trips the firms sometimes provide. They love those salaries. Some of them blame the clients for allowing themselves to be fooled. Some of them say it’s not so bad, since they’re only stealing from foreigners. (This claim was actually made on camera in the TV report last Tuesday night.) Some of them are being eaten up inside with the knowledge of the crime they are perpetrating, but carry on doing so regardless.

Last week, after my colleague Simona Weinglass and I had met with an insider who recently, finally, walked away from her job duping marks into giving her their money, we happened to pass a building where a company that writes marketing materials for a binary options firm has its offices. A young man was emerging, about to head into the traffic on his electric bicycle. I asked him if he worked for the firm; he said he did. I told him he should be ashamed of himself. He told me he had turned down “you don’t know how many offers” to work for the thieving firms themselves, directly stealing the money, but that he had to make a living, and this was a lesser evil. I asked him if his mother knows what he does for a living. The argument grew louder, and then became more civil. As he rode off, I called after him to please find another job.

Every day that the fraudulent binary options industry continues to thrive is an affront to the values we should all hold dear.

I hope he does. I hope everybody reading this who, directly or indirectly, is facilitating this vast blight — as an employee of the industry, or of its related industries, or of the authorities that ought to have long since shut this all down and sent the perpetrators to jail — sobers up and remembers that little commandment: Thou Shalt Not Steal.

This is not what Israel was revived for. This is not what Israelis daily protect this country from its enemies for. Every day that the fraudulent binary options industry continues to thrive is an affront to the values we should all hold dear. Every day that the enforcement authorities in this country allow it to thrive is an affront to the values they are charged to uphold.

A Knesset panel finally tackles binary options fraud.

Op-ed: Prompted by The Times of Israel's reporting, the State Control Committee on Monday began coming to grips with the vast, global, Israel-based scam. This is what I told the session.

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David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2018) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).

The Knesset’s State Control Committee, chaired by MK Karin Elharar (Yesh Atid), on Monday held a session aimed at tackling Israel’s vast fraudulent binary options industry.

Opening the session, Elharar noted that the issue had been brought to her attention by The Times of Israel, and specifically by myself and Simona Weinglass, the Times of Israel reporter who has spearheaded our reporting on binary options fraud. Describing binary options as “a crime occurring under our noses,” Elharar’s dismayed opening question was: If selling binary options to Israelis is illegal, why are the Israel-based firms still allowed to fleece people all over the world?

Among the speakers were Shmuel Hauser, the head of the Israeli Securities Authority, and representatives of the attorney-general’s office and the Justice Ministry, who are working together on new legislation. An English retiree, Graham Towler, who lost 70,000 pounds to binary options fraudsters, flew in to testify to the committee about how he was duped. And a former binary options worker, Adam Nujidat, explained how the scam works from the inside.

Elharar invited me to open the discussion. My aim was to enable the committee to better understand the pernicious nature, colossal scale, and appalling consequences of the fraud, and to stress that, while new legislation may have a role to play, the police already have all the legal tools necessary to close down much of the fraudulent industry because of its routine breaches of existing laws — basic laws prohibiting theft and misrepresentation.

It was my contention that the Israel Police have unconscionably failed to act against the fraud for almost a decade. Rather underlining my point, the police chose not to attend the meeting, despite having been directly called upon to do so by Elharar. She said she would address this directly with the minister responsible, would ensure that the police respond to a summary of the session, and would schedule a second session next month which police representatives would be required to attend.

Here is a lightly edited transcript of what I said.

Thousands of Israelis (as many as 15,000, according to some insiders) get up every day and go to work stealing money from people around the world.

They claim to be enabling clients to make money through short-term investments. In fact, many of them are committing fraud and theft; almost all of the clients of the industry lose all or almost all of their money. By its own estimates, the industry brings in anything from $1 billion per year to $5 billion.

In some aspects, the binary options scam is quite sophisticated. But in some aspects, it’s very simple, and — I want to stress this — in blatant breach of existing laws.

It is illegal to give dishonest investment advice. It is illegal to lie about where you are based and who you are — to lie about your name and your training. But these are routine practices in binary options. The police need no new laws to prosecute these offenders. The Israel Securities Authority needs no new laws to shut down the guilty firms right now.

It is also illegal to take money from people’s credit cards without their permission. It is illegal to refuse to let people withdraw their money. Both of these breaches of the law allegedly occur widely in binary options.

It is illegal to manipulate trading platforms to ensure that people lose their money. This, too, is allegedly widespread in binary options.

It is unforgivable that this has been allowed to continue for about a decade. It’s happening right now as we sit here. Thousands of people in Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Ramat Gan, Caesarea are phoning people all over the world and tricking them into parting with their money.

This is destroying Israel’s reputation as a safe place to do business.

It is causing anti-Semitism.

It is the dark side of the startup nation we are so rightly proud of.

It is also corrupting thousands of young Israelis who work in the field — including lots of immigrants and Arab Israelis, whose ability to speak foreign languages is essential to the fraud.

The scam has lots of accompanying scammers: the firms that write promotional material for the binary options companies; the firms that film their promotional videos; the search engine optimization experts who ensure that when you search online to learn about binary options — perhaps after this Knesset committee meeting — you get sent to pages that look like they give you honest information about binary options, but are in fact pages maintained by corrupt binary options firms themselves. Then there are the firms that transfer the colossal payments. The lawyers who set up offshore companies to hide the money. And on and on.

You need to understand the scale of this. Hundreds of thousands of people have been robbed around the world. People have committed suicide as a consequence. There are huge numbers of people whose lives have been ruined. Israeli binary options crooks are stealing billions, and leaving a swath of broken lives around the world.

And you have to understand that binary options crooks are very powerful in Israel; they have connections to very prominent people. Parts of the Israeli government have actually helped encourage their activities. The firms pay for the most expensive lawyers to battle people who try to expose them. Some of them give money to charities, which affords them access to and influence with the most prominent people in Israel.

They use violent threats against those who try to expose them. They have threatened Simona Weinglass, who has led our reporting on this for The Times of Israel, and they have threatened The Times of Israel itself.

The police and the regulators should have closed down these companies years ago. Instead, right up to today, the police refuse to even meet with us to hear the details of what is going on.

This is a plague of theft like nothing we’ve ever seen in this country. It has to be stopped.

The Times of Israel has been exposing Israel’s fraudulent binary options industry in a series of articles since March, beginning with an article entitled “The Wolves of Tel Aviv,” and has estimated that the industry here numbers over 100 companies, most of which are fraudulent and employ a variety of ruses to steal their clients’ money. These firms lure their victims into making what they are duped into believing will be profitable short-term investments, but in the overwhelming majority of cases the clients wind up losing all or almost all of their money. Thousands of Israelis work in the field, which is estimated to have fleeced billions of dollars from victims all over the world in the past decade.

The Prime Minister’s Office in October condemned the industry’s “unscrupulous practices” and called for the entire industry to be outlawed worldwide.

In November, ISA chairman Hauser told The Times of Israel that consultations had begun on the framing of legislation to bar all Israel-based binary options operations from targeting anybody, anywhere. The consultations have extended to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and to the government, he said. The Knesset panel was told on Monday that the legislation was now being drafted.