FBI Warns Investors About Fraudulent, Lucrative Israeli Online Trading Business
FBI home page Image by FBI.gov
The FBI is singling out a thriving business in Israel — two firms alone do $8 billion in business annually— that’s also ripe for fraud. Headlining the bureau’s website this week is an advisory against binary options trading, in which customers buy and sell shares of stocks — but many of the 100 companies operating in the space are fleecing customers, according to the FBI.
In its “Word of Warning to the Investing Public,” the FBI explains how fraudulent binary options operate:
- Refusing to credit customers with profits, then cutting off all phone and email contact and sometimes freezing accounts
- Falsely claiming the U.S. government requires copies of a customer’s credit card, passport, driver’s license or other documents, and using those in identity theft
- Rigging software to result in customer losses.
The FBI notes it is working on several binary options fraud cases, and that it organized a fraud summit devoted to the issue in January in The Hague. Besides Israel, the industry is flourishing in China, Japan, Europe and the U.S.
According to The Times of Israel, Israeli authorities are considering shutting down the industry.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
