In addition to requests from foreign regulators, to investigate specific Israeli binary options companies, the Israel Securities Authority has received hundreds of complaints on the matter from private individuals, both Israelis ad people abroad. "Globes" reveals some of these stories.
One woman in Singapore recounts how an Israeli binary options company fraudulently took from her more than $1.2 million. Her complaint talks about a "binary option" sting, carried out by several Israelis working under aliases for two companies registered in Tel Aviv. According to the lawyer representing her, the fraud was carried out via the Internet in the UK, "as part as one of the biggest frauds in the UK in recent years, which has received major headlines and coverage in the British media."
The Singaporean woman says that she transferred to the investment companies substantial sums of money and at a certain stage she attempted to withdraw her money. She was not only met with a refusal but also threats and extortion. The case was passed on by the Israel Securities Authority to Interpol in Singapore, which is handling it together with Israel Police.
In another case, a veteran 70-year old Israeli lawyer was tempted and invested via an Israeli binary options company. He describes himself as not understanding the securities market and so he invested according to the recommendations of the company and transferred money to the company following assurances that "everything was certain" as well as "his operations would be protected against loss" and "in the event of loss, I would receive my money back."
The result of that investment was that the lawyer lost about NIS 400,000 and was unable to get back a single shekel. The company told him that it had to continue trading in large amounts worth thousands of percentages more than were invested and deposited with the company to reach a certain level of returns. He agreed and continued to invest, sucked in by this deceptive talk. The lawyer told the Israel Securities Authority that he didn't understand the conduct and operation of his account, and when he asked, he was met by a refusal to detail the transactions in his account, and of course he never got his money back.
In another instance, an Israeli investor lost NIS 700,000 in a binary options investment with an Israeli company. The investor told the Israel Securities Authority that the data on the company's website did not always match the amount of money he had invested. After he had lost various sums of money, they would add and invest more money, as suggested to him by the company, "so that they could protect his investment" and so that he could continue trading. In this way, he accumulated losses of hundreds of thousands of shekels that had comprised his entire savings. Today, the investor has had his account frozen by his bank and his cards taken away by the credit card company.
Another case that reached the Israel Securities Authority was from a woman who had invested in binary options and had also persuaded relatives to invest with the same Israeli company. When they tried to pull out, they met with a refusal. The same woman explained that at a certain stage, she did not like the lack of control that she felt about this type of investment and the conduct of the company's representatives to her, which wasn't transparent. Consequently, she tried to withdraw her money. In response she was met with a refusal and threats. She said that she continued to invest out of "fear" and lost all her money, as did her relatives.
They promised that they would teach me how to trade," she recounts. "But in practice they told me what to do. The truth is that I got carried away and brought my family in and proposed that they also trade. I very quickly understood that they were pulling the strings and they decided if I was winning or losing and after that I stopped trading to all intents and purposes. When I notified them that I wanted to stop trading and withdraw my money, I wrote to them that I wanted my money but they called back and said threateningly that they didn't owe me anything, even though my account showed that this wasn't the case."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 27, 2016
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