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Israel: Haven for International Scammers and Fraud
French and Israeli media report that a group largely made up of Israelis scammed 3,000 French citizens out of approximately $20 million. Most of the stolen money is in Israel, but Israeli authorities are reportedly failing to cooperate with France in prosecuting the scammers and retrieving the money.
This is the latest of numerous examples of Israeli officials stonewalling international efforts against the perpetrators of massive financial swindles around the world, according to Israeli investigative journalists and others. These scams have brought estimated billions into the Israeli economy, propping up a regime widely condemned for human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing against indigenous Palestinians. Together, the stories paint a picture of a government that seems to be turning a blind eye to
and even protecting
scammers.
A Finance Magnates analysis reports that one of the swindles alone has brought in over a billion dollars and employs 5,000 people. And a new scam, described below, may help what is predicted to be
the next major driver of the Israeli economy.
A former IRS expert on international crime notes that
fraudulent industries are often major economic drivers, and that can translate into political clout.
Some Israeli journalists have been working to expose the situation in Israeli newspapers, publishing expos
s like
As Israel turns blind eye to vast binary options fraud, French investigators step in
and
Are French Jewish criminals using Israel as a get-out-of-jail card?
(Short answer: yes.)
Victimizing French business owners & churches
The victims of the recent scam against French citizens included churches and the owners of small businesses
delicatessens, car repair shops, hair salons, plumbers, etc. Some lost their life savings and describe being threatened and intimidated by the scammers.
The masterminds of the scam reportedly were Antoine Ilan Frau (aka Ilan Frau) and Michael Nedjar, both of whom resided in Israel at the time. French police arrested the two at the Paris airport in 2016 as they were about to return to Israel. While they and 25 others were subsequently found guilty in a French court, other alleged co-conspirators have not yet been arrested and are believed to be in Israel.
https://russia-insider.com/en/israel-haven-international-scammers-and-fraud/ri27398
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In absence of Israeli action, FBI steps in
Finally, the FBI announced in September 2017 that the U.S. was going to start going after binary options scammers. FBI agents arrested an Israeli CEO when she landed at JFK airport. The woman, Lee Elbaz of Yukom Communications, currently awaits trial in the U.S. for operations that are believed to have victimized thousands of people.
The Israeli police refused to answer TOI
s questions about where Israeli law enforcement had been during the years that these actions had been perpetrated.
A few months later the FBI pursued additional suspects in Israel. An Israeli lawyer who represents victims of binary options fraud said that the FBI raids were
a direct result of Israel
s failure to enforce the law.
The attorney told TOI that he had been trying for years to alert Israeli law enforcement to financial frauds, with no result:
I provided the police with the names of the Israeli companies that are behind the binary options websites, the addresses in Israel of their offices, and the names of the Israelis behind these companies. At least once, I gave the police the phone number of a former employee who was willing to give evidence, and another time I gave the police concrete information on one of the main issues that the FBI is now investigating. As far as I know, the police have done nothing with all these complaints and information.
In January FBI agents raided at least one Israeli company and questioned the owner of some other Israeli companies that are accused of targeting Americans. No further arrests seem to have yet been made.
While the Bureau would not comment on the raids, a former senior FBI official told TOI that transnational organized crime networks are attracted to Israel because
they identify corruption and lax law enforcement.
Israeli
Nigerian
scams
Some of the often inaccurately termed
Nigerian
scams have also been connected to Israel.
In 2010 seven Israelis were charged with scamming tens of millions of dollars from U.S. pensioners in a so-called
Nigerian scam,
according to Ha
aretz. Eventually, 12 Israelis were charged in the scheme to swindle elderly Americans.
The Israelis were extradited to the U.S., where the prosecutor described them as
a predatory group that targeted elderly people in the U.S., conning them into believing they were lottery winners. Preying on their victims
dreams of financial comfort, [they] bilked them out of substantial portions of their life savings.
According to the U.S. Attorney
s office:
Thanks to Government Inaction, Israel Has Become a Haven for International Scammers and Fraud
Investigations reveal officials in Israel are stonewalling efforts to stop perpetrators of massive fraud and scammers from Europe to the US.
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2019-07-05T15:42:35Z