First successful Binary Options civil suit in Israel

Source: FNG Gerald Segal 2020-06-08

An Israeli court has made the first ruling against the former owner of a Binary Options brokerage, in a move which may lead to a slew of other lawsuits.

As first reported in local online news site The Times of Israel, Haifa District Court Judge Ron Sokol issued a ruling on April 18 ordering B4Binary.com owner Shabtay Yaacobi to pay a total of NIS 2,051,982 (about USD $600,000) to five plaintiffs from outside the country. The original lawsuit was brought in 2017, so the action took nearly three years to work its way through the Israeli court system.

The victory is somewhat small in scope given the total suspected fraudulent activity of hundreds of millions of dollars (possibly billions) which took place mainly in the early to mid 2010’s in the Israel-based Binary Options sector. However it is more than just a symbolic victory, in that it potentially paves the way for a slew of lawsuits in which alleged Binary Options victims could get their money back, according to the Times article.

We should also note that this was a civil action, not criminal, meaning that no-one here is going to jail. To date, Israeli authorities have not indicted nor filed criminal charges against anyone for the numerous Binary Options related frauds which originated from the country. The only person now sitting in jail for Binary Options fraud is former Yukom CEO Lee Elbaz, who ran several Binary brands including BigOption, BinaryBook, and BinaryOnline. But Ms. Elbaz is in a US jail – she was arrested in 2017 after landing at JFK airport off a flight from Israel, and was eventually convicted and sentenced to 22 years in jail last summer. US authorities are also proceeding with a $100 million+ civil suit against Ms. Elbaz and her bosses from Yukom.

The judge in the B4Binary civil suit ruled that Mr. Yaacobi and his company systematically defrauded his victims, used tactics including impersonating a broker named Zack Peterson, and refused to let clients withdraw their money.

Israel

fraud

United States

First successful Binary Options civil suit in Israel

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