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In this photo from July 16, , Lee Elbaz arrives at federal court for jury selection in her trial in Greenbelt, Md. Sign up for the Tech Israel Daily and never miss Israel's top tech stories. Newsletter email address Subscribe By signing up, you agree to the terms. Thank you, Tal Schneider, Political Correspondent. Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel. Most Popular. Orthodox parties demand legalization of gender-segregated public events. close popup. Sign in or Register.

Or Continue with By registering you agree to the terms and conditions. Prior to that, she worked at LeapRate. Maria has a Philosophy degree from the St. Kliment Ochridski university in Sofia. She has specialized in Cognitive Science in Vienna. Her interests include psychology, AI, and linguistics.

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But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. She also had close ties to a company called Numaris, based in Tel Aviv, that similarly solicited clients to invest in binary options. Finally, Elbaz communicated regularly with, and occasionally sent employees to, another company, Linkopia, based in Mauritius.

The scheme began with Linkopia employees communicating with potential clients. Retention agents shared certain similarities. They had no relevant experience in financial markets or investment strategies yet represented otherwise to clients. For example, Shira Uzan obtained a degree in gerontology and held jobs at a cellphone provider, a daycare center, and an airline company before Elbaz hired her to work at Yukom.

Yukom employee Hadas Ben Haim went by the name Jessica Giovani, for instance. In addition to lying about their experience and background, retention agents lied about the nature of investing in binary options. Elbaz hired, trained, and oversaw the retention agents who made these misrepresentations.

She was physically present in the office — which resembled a party type atmosphere where agents were incentivizing the client to deposit and to increase urgency so they deposit quicker. She was, in short, in full control of what was going on at Yukom, the DOJ notes.

Elbaz also directed retention agents to prevent client withdrawals. Victims who sent money to Yukom included victims from the United States. As the scheme unraveled, Elbaz and others recognized and sought to guard against potential criminal exposure. Reports surfaced in the Israeli press in August about malfeasance in the binary-options industry; the next month, Elbaz sent a text message to a friend stating that what Elbaz did was not legal in the United States.

In September , Elbaz and Yossi Herzog discussed potential legal liability associated with traveling to United States. The DOJ argues that this case involves a permissible domestic application of the wire fraud statute.

As every court of appeals to have considered the issue has held, Section focuses on prohibiting wire transmissions that execute a fraud scheme. The indictment alleged that Elbaz caused such transmissions i. The presumption against extraterritoriality does not apply to the advisory Sentencing Guidelines, and 18 U. As such, the district court was not required to confront any difficulties posed by assessing foreign law.

And any error would be harmless because losses suffered by United States victims exceeded the total loss attributed to Elbaz, and because the district court would have imposed the same sentence—which was a month downward variance from the advisory Guidelines range—even if it had miscalculated that range.

Regulatory News. Maria Nikolova 0 Comments July 29, Binary options fraudster Lee Elbaz, the CEO of Yukom Communications, has once again challenged her prison sentence.

On July 28, , Elbaz filed Petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc with the Fourth Circuit U. Court of Appeals. This happens less than a month after the Appeals Court sided with the District Court and affirmed the prison sentence of Elbaz, nixing her attempt to appeal from the sentence.

Requesting a rehearing en banc is the last step when a defendant challenges a ruling. For her participation in the scheme, the district court sentenced Ms. After the parties closed their case the jury began deliberating on Thursday, August 1, On Monday, the jury indicated that it could not reach a consensus. On Tuesday, August 6, the court confronted an issue with a juror. He said that he had thought that Ms. Elbaz was not guilty. But what he overheard affected him because it made him think that he might be wrong.

It also affected the jury deliberations. Even though the juror heard the information on Sunday, he spent all of Monday in deliberations and did not tell the court until Tuesday. I listened and just put in, you know, my little two cent.

Elbaz moved for a mistrial, which the district court denied. The court dismissed the juror and started the process of bringing in an alternate. The district judge asked the parties their thoughts on conducting voir dire of the other 11 jurors to ask if any information had been brought into the jury room from outside of the trial.

It conducted the voir dire, denied the motion for a mistrial, and seated the alternate juror. The jury began deliberations anew and, after a very short time, found Ms. Elbaz guilty. At sentencing, Ms. She argued that her conduct was legal in Israel where she lived and worked and that the government did not provide evidence showing that any of the non-domestic losses resulted from illegal conduct. The district court agreed that her overseas conduct appeared legal, but nonetheless overruled the objection.

The district court, in addition to the standard conditions of supervised release, imposed several special conditions on Ms. It did not, however, provide any explanation as to why these special conditions were necessary. Elbaz timely appealed. A panel Judges Richardson, Rushing, and Traxler affirmed the conviction and most of the sentence but vacated part of the restitution order.

In so doing, the panel held that plain error review applied because Ms. Elbaz did not preserve this argument. Elbaz now raises the same arguments again. The lawsuit continues at the the Fourth Circuit U. Your email address will not be published. FNG — Forex, CFD and Crypto trading industry news. Breaking News Saxo Bank to launch new Track and Trace feature for portfolio transfers. WisdomTree Securities gets approval to become FINRA broker-dealer member.

BTIG to open regional office in Miami Beach. Exclusive: Axi control sold via management buyout. FINRA fines Barclays Capital for overstating its trading volume. Regulatory News Binary options fraudster Lee Elbaz challenges prison sentence again Maria Nikolova 0 Comments July 29, Maria Nikolova Maria has been engaged in journalism for more than 13 years, providing Forex industry coverage for the past seven years. Before joining FNG she was Managing Editor at FinanceFeeds.

Prior to that, she worked at LeapRate. Maria has a Philosophy degree from the St. Kliment Ochridski university in Sofia. She has specialized in Cognitive Science in Vienna. Her interests include psychology, AI, and linguistics. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.

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The jury reached its verdict less than a day after a juror was dismissed after reporting he had had indirect contact with third parties who had influenced his thinking about the case. Elbaz hired, trained, and oversaw the retention agents who made these misrepresentations. First, binary-option investments were marketed by two foreign companies, BinaryBook and BigOption. When the FBI learned of her imminent arrival, agents scrambled to file a criminal complaint with the Maryland district court, charging her with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Your email address will not be published. in Israel — Lissa Mel, Shira Uzan, Liora Welles, Austin Smith and Yair Hadar — signed plea deals with the US government. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent.

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