Debriefing An elderly Jewish-American couple was swindled out of a quarter of a million dollars by Israeli fraudsters in the foreign exchange trading industry - and this is just the tip of the iceberg ● Many Israelis operate in this corrupt arena, which has flourished again after exposures during Israel Time led to a decline in the scope of binary options fraud ● Judge Magen Altuvia, who heard the case, urged the state to address the phenomenon ● But his call has not been answered to this day

• A judge in a civil lawsuit over a foreign exchange trading fraud, which has been ongoing in the Tel Aviv District Court since 2015, has repeatedly asked law enforcement authorities to investigate the case, but has received delayed and non-committal responses, according to court documents.

This stalemate highlights the long-standing failure of Israeli law enforcement authorities to prosecute cyber fraudsters who continue to operate freely from Israel, and who have stolen billions of dollars from victims in the country and, more importantly, around the world.

Subscribe now to the daily newsletter

For the past five years, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Magen Altuvia has presided over the hearing of a lawsuit against the foreign exchange trading website Trade-24.com.

The plaintiffs, a middle-aged Israeli-American couple, alleged that the Israelis who allegedly ran the site, Israel Figa, Avraham Spielman and others, fraudulently swindled them out of $241,519. Both Figa and Spielman deny the allegations against them.

In late 2018, a feud between defendants Figa and Spielman led Spielman to reveal internal company documents to prosecutors in retaliation for his colleague. Those documents, filed in court, not only provide a rare and startling look into the inner workings of a secretive Israeli forex trading firm, whose employees not only used pseudonyms but also often pretended to be based in London, Paris or Switzerland.It seems that the leak of the document and the subsequent events also convinced the judge, Magen Altuvia, to ask the Attorney General to open a criminal investigation against the company. But in vain.

The documents provide a rare and startling look into the inner workings of a secretive Israeli forex trading company, whose employees not only used pseudonyms but also often pretended to be based in London, Paris or Switzerland.

On June 2, 2019, Altovia ruled that:

"(The) Attorney General's Office will announce by September 5, 2019 whether it intends to join the proceedings. The appropriate authorities in the Ministry of Justice/Attorney General will also examine whether there is a need to inform any regulatory authorities or the Israel Police regarding this lawsuit, the conduct arising from it, including before its filing and during its management."

But a year later, his demand has still not been met. As of July 9, according to Altovia, he is still waiting for a real response:

"I await clarification from the legal advisor as to why there is no need to open an investigation regarding the alleged facts revealed in the lawsuit, which amount to a need to protect the public. The secretariat will forward this decision to the district attorney."

A few days later, the court received a response from Merav Koenig Wallerstein, head of the commercial department at the Tel Aviv District Attorney's Office:

"We would like to reiterate the update submitted on September 5, 2019, according to which the materials from the court case were transferred to the relevant enforcement agencies. The enforcement agencies are acting and will act on the matter in accordance with their role and discretion. When a decision is made on the matter, an update notice will be provided to the honorable court."

Nimrod Assif, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told Zman Israel that he was not impressed with the response of the Tel Aviv District Attorney's Office.

"As far as I know, neither the police nor any other law enforcement agency has made any attempt to investigate this case. If they had done anything, I think I would have known. The response that the government gave on July 16 seems to me, sad to say, like a bluff."

Screenshot from a video promoting the foreign exchange trading website Trade-24.com, which is no longer active today (Photo: Facebook)

Different routes for Americans in Israel

One of the interesting aspects of the Trade-24 case is that many of the key players in it are American citizens. The plaintiffs, who lost a large portion of their savings, are a highly skilled couple who immigrated to Israel and found employment in the high-tech industry.

On the other hand, their agent on the Trade-24 website, a man named Steve, was an immigrant from the United States who was struggling to find work after his divorce, and like many other immigrants from the United States, came to work at a call center under a false identity. Israel Figa, an ultra-Orthodox Jew from Bnei Brak and the alleged owner of Trade-24, is also an American citizen, according to court documents.

The main shareholder of the platform provider of Trade-24.com – a company called Labright, which received a percentage of Trade-24’s trading turnover – is also American, according to court documents. A man named Simon Cox, who owns 28% of the company, has held Labright shares since December 2014. Cox appears to have never lived in Israel, but he is also an American citizen, and has close ties to the Kremlin, having made headlines for donating generously to Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

A Hanukkah-themed advertisement for the website Trade-24.com, which appeared in Jewish Press on November 20, 2014 (Photo: Screenshot)

Trade-24 targeted, among other things, American investors, as can be seen from advertisements published in American media outlets that target observant audiences, such as the Jewish Press and the websites Yeshiva World News and VosIzNeias.com. According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs began trading on the site in June 2014, and lost $241,519 in 3 months.

Many aspects of the case are reminiscent of the conduct of the binary options industry in Israel, which was involved in fraudulent schemes, including the use of call centers, high-pressure sales, and concealing the fact that the company makes money when investors lose.

Many aspects of the case are reminiscent of the conduct of the binary options industry in Israel, such as the use of call centers, sales through high pressure, and concealment of the fact that the company makes money when the investor loses.

But Trade-24 did not offer binary options trading, where the platform provider could influence investors' chances of profit or loss, but rather highly leveraged foreign exchange trading, where customers almost always lost the money they invested through a mechanism called margin calls.

The plaintiffs in the case against Trade-24 were given leverage of 1:100 to 1:200. Leverage is a type of loan that Trade-24 offered to investors. Thus, customers could invest $1,000 and enter into a trade of $100,000 (leverage of 1:100).

Judge Magen Altuvia (Photo: Court Spokespersons)

Leverage increases the risk in trading, as small fluctuations in the value of a currency lead to huge movements in the amount of profit or loss. Thus, with a leverage of 1:100, if the value of the currency changed by one percent to the client's detriment, he lost the entire amount invested in the transaction.

According to the complaint, the company's brokers allegedly concealed from the plaintiffs the high risk of leveraged trading and the fact that Trade-24 profited when customers lost money and that the brokers themselves earned a certain percentage of net deposits, meaning they earned a certain percentage of the total amount of money that investors deposited less the amount they withdrew.

The brokers also allegedly concealed the fact that they received financial incentives from their employers to persuade clients to increase trading volume as much as possible. In addition,The brokers ostensibly presented themselves as expert investment advisors, often using fictitious names and resumes, when in fact they had no such training.

The defendants claimed that the plaintiffs were aware of the high risk of foreign exchange trading and that they entered into these investments voluntarily. They also denied that Israel Figa owned Trade-24.com and claimed that he was the vice president of business development for Bull Market Investments Ltd., an Israeli company that provides marketing services to foreign exchange trading companies abroad.

Regulators around the world have issued warnings about Trade-24.com, including the Italian Consob (Securities Authority), the UK Financial Conduct Authority, the Ontario Securities Commission and the French Financial Markets Authority.

Regulators around the world have issued warnings about Trade-24.com, including the Italian Consob (Securities Authority), the UK Financial Conduct Authority, the Ontario Securities Commission and the French Financial Markets Authority.

An unexpected breakthrough

In October 2018, the trial reached the evidentiary stage. One day, as the prosecutors were sitting in the cafeteria of the Tel Aviv District Court, they were approached by a Haredi man who identified himself as Mordechai Berl Daskal, a close friend of Spielman. Daskal told the prosecutors that a fight had broken out between Figa and Spielman, and that he wanted to give them documents that would incriminate Figa.

Over the next three months, Spielman and Daskal scanned numerous internal company documents and emailed them to Nimrod Assif, the plaintiffs' attorney.

Spielman even testified against Figa in court in October 2018, but eventually changed his mind and stopped helping prosecutors. In later court hearings, Spielman vaguely said that some of the documents he gave prosecutors “may be forged,” without specifying which ones.

The documents leaked by Spielman and Daskal indicate that Trade-24.com did not operate in a vacuum, but relied on a global system of call centers, lead providers, a platform provider, banks, clearing companies, currency service providers, and brokers, to transfer money from their customers around the world to the company's beneficiaries.

For example, Trade-24.com operated through companies in at least seven countries: Israel, Ukraine, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Seychelles, and the Marshall Islands. It had three call centers, one in Israel, one in Ukraine, and one in Bulgaria.

Trade-24 had bank accounts all over the world, and worked with no less than ten companies that allowed it to receive payments from investors over the Internet.

Those companies were BSG, Counting House/Pacnet, Andaria/Intercash, Emerchantpay, Transact Europe, MoneynetInt, Skrill, Upaycard, Astech and GTS Payments.

Spielman also revealed to the defendants eye-opening WhatsApp correspondence between him and Figa, which lasted about two years. Most of the conversations dealt with depositing and withdrawing money, along with gossip about other agents in the forex and binary options trading industry, news stories that Figa shared about ultra-Orthodox Jews who were caught after allegedly engaging in fraud, and Torah discourses.

In correspondence, Spielman described withdrawing funds, sometimes tens of millions of dollars, from "changes" (non-bank foreign exchange service providers) and depositing funds in savings banks.

"Avromi, call Berger, order the money for tomorrow," Figa ordered Spielman on February 15, 2014.

Figa was referring to Reuven Zeev Berger, the owner of “Change,” or a foreign exchange service provider, in Bnei Brak, who was arrested by police in September 2014 on suspicion of being part of an international money laundering ring. In 2016, police recommended that Berger be prosecuted, but the state attorney’s office has yet to do so.

Motivational post on Trade-24's Facebook (Photo: Facebook)

"I'm thinking of transferring all the money with you to the Mir Military Academy," Figa wrote a few days later.

"Okay," Spielman replied. "It's a $100 million contract," Figa noted.

The GMAH funds are managed by volunteers and allow community members to deposit money and other members to receive interest-free loans. There are thousands of such interest-free loan companies in the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, which numbers about a million people, and the total deposits in them, according to one economist, is between 5 and 10 billion shekels. But some observers believe that GMAH funds are used as a tool for tax evasion and/or money laundering.

There are thousands of interest-free loan funds in ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, with total deposits estimated at between 5 and 10 billion shekels. But some observers believe that interest-free loan funds are used as a tool for tax evasion and/or money laundering.

Figa – who started his career at Forex Place under the guidance of  gossiped about his colleagues in the foreign exchange and binary options business. In messages to Spielman, he mentioned meetings with Shalom Peretz, who was associated with Yokom Communications, David Biton, an attorney who worked with Trade-24, and Ran Strauss, shareholders in Bright.

In one of the correspondences, Figa described opening a call center in Bulgaria. "Shimi landed in Bulgaria, opened a company there, with Yaakov," he wrote in January 2015.

"It looks good, the average salary there is 400 euros. The guys who help him there are now opening a 250-person call center for Binary! It's all automated there, there's even a phone robot that makes the sale. We have a lot of old leads, it will be a call center for lead warmers. Because paying an Israeli for old leads isn't worth it. Because it's expensive time and money. We'll dump the leads there and close them here at the call center. It's going to be a fire," wrote Figa.

Yossi Herzog in a London hotel, 2015 (Photo: Courtesy)

Where were the police?

When the plaintiffs first filed suit against Trade-24.com, the judge asked them why they didn't check whether the company had a license. "That question confused me," one of the plaintiffs told Znamen Yisrael. "He operated in broad daylight, from a fancy building in Ramat Gan, not from a back alley in south Tel Aviv. Where were the Securities and Exchange Authority, the Knesset, the police?"

The Trade-24.com website is no longer active. According to court documents, Spielman has since moved on to run a foreign exchange and cryptocurrency trading website called Marketscube.com, which has been the subject of regulatory warnings from the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority and the UK Financial Conduct Authority.

The foreign exchange trading industry in Israel was and remains a close cousin of the binary options industry, which was involved in fraudulent schemes and thrived in Israel for a decade until it was outlawed by the Knesset in October 2017, largely following a series of investigations by The Times of Israel, which began with an article published on march 2026

At the height of the industry, hundreds of companies in Israel employed thousands of Israelis who allegedly stole billions of dollars from victims around the world.The companies that perpetrated these scams tricked victims into believing that their investments were successful and profitable, and encouraged them to deposit more and more money into their accounts, until finally the company cut off contact with them and disappeared with most or all of their money.

The Israeli Attorney General's Office has not yet filed indictments against any binary options fraud suspects. The United States has prosecuted about 25 suspects, of whom seven Israelis have been convicted, and has taken civil enforcement measures against many others.

The Israeli Attorney General's Office has yet to indict any suspects in the binary options scam. The United States has indicted about 25 suspects, including seven Israelis, and has taken civil enforcement measures against many others.

Business is booming.

Many companies that once traded binary options now sell foreign currency and cryptocurrencies from call centers in Israel and Eastern Europe. In recent months, these same companies have again begun openly advertising for sales agents on Facebook, after several years of keeping a relatively low profile.

Groups like "Jobs for Foreign Language Speakers in Israel" are once again filled with job ads for "telemarketing" or "retention agents" at "global" or "financial" companies. One ad explains that this industry, unlike others in Israel, has not been affected by the coronavirus.

Groups like "Jobs for Foreign Language Speakers in Israel" are once again filled with job ads for "telemarketing" or "retention agents" at "global" or "financial" companies. One ad explains that this industry has not been affected by the coronavirus.

"A million unemployed people have already signed up (at the employment office)," reads an ad posted on Facebook. "In our company, we are still recruiting and still succeeding in the financial field!"

Copyright Disclaimer: - Under section 107 of the copyright Act 1976, allowance is mad for FAIR USE for purpose such a as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statues that might otherwise be infringing. Non- Profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of FAIR USE.