On Wednesday, Israel’s State Attorney’s Office asked the Jerusalem District Court to sanction the extradition of six Israeli citizens to the United States to stand trial for their involvement in a binary options scheme that targeted citizens of the country and other nations. The scheme resulted in a loss of $145 million for investors between 2016 and 2017.

A local Israeli business daily, TheMarker, reports that the six citizens, who were arrested on Tuesday over their involvement in the scheme, include Uri Maimon, Nissim Alfasi, Oron Montgomery, Dave Barzilai, Afik Tori and Gilad Magozi.

Former CEO of Yukom, Lee Elbaz Sentenced to 22 Years

Finance Magnates reports that Lee Elbaz, the former CEO of Yukom Communications which ran the scheme through the fake binary options websites BigOption and BinaryBook, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2019 by the District Court of Maryland. Elbaz was convicted of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Elbaz had been arrested in 2017 while she was travelling to New York and was later convicted alongside 15 other defendants in the case. In addition, Lissa Mel, an Israeli former reality show contestant, was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment in August 2018 for her involvement in the scheme. Mel was also ordered to pay a total of $288,024 in restitution to victims of the scheme.

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How the Yukom Binary Options Fraud Operated

According to court papers, Yukom employees under Elbaz’s direction misled investors to commit their money to the company’s fake binary options business. The company, through several call centers operated from Caesarea and Tel Aviv, pitched the business to potential investors, falsely claiming that the business represented investors’ interest when, on the contrary, it profited from their losses. On top of that, the staff provided investors with false names and qualifications while falsely claiming to be working from London.

In its investigation, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, which visited Yukom’s Israel-based headquarters in 2018, found that while the operators through the fraudulent scheme defrauded investors of $145 million, they only paid back $20 million to investors between 2016 and 2017.