On Monday, it goes for the first of three readings in the Knesset. The Times of Israel heard last week from the devastated husband of a year-old woman in Singapore, the mother of a 3-year-old child, who said she took her own life last month, six months after losing a five-figure sum to Option. FM, a now-defunct binary options website. The Times of Israel also heard from a friend of a woman in Italy who said she fell into a depression and died after losing money to Strongoptions. The husband, A.

In the weeks since she died, A. FM, who called themselves Daniel Sharp, Kevin Bloom and Glenn Moore. Fraudulent Israeli binary options companies ostensibly offer customers worldwide a potentially profitable short-term investment, but in reality — through rigged trading platforms, refusal to pay out, and other ruses — these companies fleece the vast majority of customers of most or all of their money.

The fraudulent salespeople routinely conceal where they are located, misrepresent what they are selling, and use false identities, so these are most likely not the real names of the brokers.

She sends an email to Option. It is your well trained account managers who gave me instructions to place the trades. Your analyst and signals are all rubbish if all trades will be lost.

However, Option. FM would like to resolve the dispute and keep all its traders happy by offering you a refund of USD The promise of help is just a facade for me to deposit big sum and get trapped in the end. But according to her husband, the money she used to trade had been borrowed from banks. After her final correspondence with Option. FM in October , the woman, an exercise studio instructor, fell into a spiral of debt from which she could not recover, according to her husband.

By March of this year, buried under a growing mountain of debt, she resorted to borrowing money from loan sharks, after she received a text message offering her a loan. She filed a report with the Singapore police, describing that interaction as it played out.

But last month, her husband said, as a result of what he believes was the intense psychological pressure from the harassment by the loan sharks, she killed herself. One early morning, the husband said, he and his sister-in-law awoke to find her dead. They are now after me and my sister-in-law. They have started to harass us and even send runners to our place. As a husband it is very painful to me that I did nothing to help her.

I hope you can help me and my son to get the justice my wife deserves. In a recent lawsuit filed by a Dutch citizen who lost money to Option. FM, lawyers Nir Friedman and Yossy Haezrachy filed evidence to the court that Oren Shabat Laurent, the former CEO of the much-censured and recently closed binary options firm Banc de Binary, is the founder of Option.

FM, although he has denied this. They want to have another account. So Option. The Times of Israel reached out to Laurent for his response to the Singapore case, but had not heard back from him at time of publication.

Meanwhile, The Times of Israel heard from a retired tour guide from the town of Sassari in Sardinia by the name of Antonio Sciplino, who lost about 75, euros to a company called financial-advice. net, an introductory broker for the website Strongoptions.

Sciplino wired his money to TBI Bank in Bulgaria. Sciplino, whose broker first contacted him in December and spoke educated Italian with a hint of a Roman accent, has had to go back to work as a result of losing much of his savings.

He has spared no effort trying to track down his brokers, and believes that both Strongoptions. com and financial-advice. net were based in Israel. Sciplino told The Times of Israel that he encouraged two of his acquaintances to invest in Strong Options as well. One of these, a year-old woman of meager means, whom he believes lost between 15, and 25, euros, subsequently fell into a terrible depression, stopped eating and passed away.

Neither Strongoptions. com nor financial-advice. The Israel Securities Authority needs no new laws to shut down the guilty firms right now. It is illegal to refuse to let people withdraw their money.

Both of these breaches of the law allegedly occur widely in binary options. It is illegal to manipulate trading platforms to ensure that people lose their money. This, too, is allegedly widespread in binary options. It is unforgivable that this has been allowed to continue for about a decade. Thousands of people in Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Ramat Gan, Caesarea are phoning people all over the world and tricking them into parting with their money.

It is also corrupting thousands of young Israelis who work in the field — including lots of immigrants and Arab Israelis, whose ability to speak foreign languages is essential to the fraud.

The scam has lots of accompanying scammers: the firms that write promotional material for the binary options companies; the firms that film their promotional videos; the search engine optimization experts who ensure that when you search online to learn about binary options — perhaps after this Knesset committee meeting — you get sent to pages that look like they give you honest information about binary options, but are in fact pages maintained by corrupt binary options firms themselves.

Then there are the firms that transfer the colossal payments. The lawyers who set up offshore companies to hide the money.

And on and on. You need to understand the scale of this. Hundreds of thousands of people have been robbed around the world. People have committed suicide as a consequence. There are huge numbers of people whose lives have been ruined. Israeli binary options crooks are stealing billions, and leaving a swath of broken lives around the world.

And you have to understand that binary options crooks are very powerful in Israel; they have connections to very prominent people. Parts of the Israeli government have actually helped encourage their activities. The firms pay for the most expensive lawyers to battle people who try to expose them. Some of them give money to charities, which affords them access to and influence with the most prominent people in Israel. They use violent threats against those who try to expose them.

They have threatened Simona Weinglass, who has led our reporting on this for The Times of Israel, and they have threatened The Times of Israel itself. The police and the regulators should have closed down these companies years ago. Instead, right up to today, the police refuse to even meet with us to hear the details of what is going on.

It has to be stopped. These firms lure their victims into making what they are duped into believing will be profitable short-term investments, but in the overwhelming majority of cases the clients wind up losing all or almost all of their money. Thousands of Israelis work in the field, which is estimated to have fleeced billions of dollars from victims all over the world in the past decade. In November, ISA chairman Hauser told The Times of Israel that consultations had begun on the framing of legislation to bar all Israel-based binary options operations from targeting anybody, anywhere.

The consultations have extended to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and to the government, he said. The Knesset panel was told on Monday that the legislation was now being drafted. I joined The Times of Israel after many years covering US and Israeli politics for Hebrew news outlets.

I believe responsible coverage of Israeli politicians means presenting a degree view of their words and deeds — not only conveying what occurs, but also what that means in the broader context of Israeli society and the region.

I believe Israel is stronger and more democratic when professional journalists do that tough job well. Your support for our work by joining The Times of Israel Community helps ensure we can continue to do so. So now we have a request.

All 31 Knesset members in the plenary at the time voted in favor of the law on its first reading. Binary options is an Israel-based enterprise which has flourished with almost no intervention by law enforcement for a decade. Fraudulent firms employ thousands of Israelis, whose activities bilking people around the world out of money have been exposed in a series of articles by The Times of Israel since March Deputy Finance Minister Yitzhak Cohen Shas presented the law on Monday, saying it was necessary for the social good, as many families have been devastated by binary options fraud.

However, Khenin called for the proposed law to be expanded to include other fraudulent speculative financial products as well. Khenin did not specify which additional financial products he was referring to. The proposed law does state that forex companies operating from Israel will be required to be licensed in the counties where they do business, but does not ban retail forex.

The law will now go to the Knesset House Committee, which will in turn pass it on to whichever other Knesset Committee it determines is most appropriate, in order to prepare it for a second and third reading in the plenary. Fraudulent Israeli binary options companies ostensibly offer customers worldwide a potentially profitable short-term investment.

But in reality — through rigged trading platforms, refusal to pay out, and other ruses — these companies fleece the vast majority of customers of most or all of their money.

The fraudulent salespeople routinely conceal where they are located, misrepresent what they are selling, and use false identities. The bill bans all binary options trading, period, and thus aims to put a complete halt to the blight of Israeli binary options firms duping victims all over the world into parting with their money.

It also targets unregulated forex and CFD companies operating from Israel, requiring them to obtain a specific license to operate in any country where they have customers.

Many such companies operating from Israel also engage in fraudulent practices. In August, Israel Securities Authority Chairman Shmuel Hauser promised he would take the necessary steps to thwart the fraudsters.

This is stoking anti-Semitism. Hauser also mentioned two deaths as a result of binary options fraud. Just recently, the Israel Securities Authority learned of another death, of an elderly woman on the island of Sardinia who lost a large sum to an Israeli binary options firm.

This and a third death were documented by The Times of Israel on Sunday. Apple earlier this month banned binary options trading apps from its online store. In March, the FBI placed a public warning against binary options fraud at the top of its website. The proposed law would give the ISA the authority to impose penalties of up to two years in prison to anyone who violates the ban.

Last month, in a move that indicated the Israel Police had finally begun to tackle the multi-billion dollar global fraud, Eliran Saada, the Tel Aviv owner of a fraudulent binary options firm, was arrested on suspicion of aggravated fraud, misrepresentation, false accounting, forgery, extortion and blackmail.

In recent months, in anticipation of the proposed law, several binary options companies have shut down, while many have relocated their call centers abroad, including to Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. I joined The Times of Israel after many years covering US and Israeli politics for Hebrew news outlets. I believe responsible coverage of Israeli politicians means presenting a degree view of their words and deeds — not only conveying what occurs, but also what that means in the broader context of Israeli society and the region.

I believe Israel is stronger and more democratic when professional journalists do that tough job well. Your support for our work by joining The Times of Israel Community helps ensure we can continue to do so.

So now we have a request. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community. The Knesset plenum votes on the state budget for , December 21, Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories. Newsletter email address Get it By signing up, you agree to the terms. Shmuel Hauser, chairman of the Israel Securities Authority, seen at the Finance Committee in the Knesset.

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Sciplino told The Times of Israel that he encouraged two of his acquaintances to invest in Strong Options as well. The law will now go to the Knesset House Committee, which will in turn pass it on to whichever other Knesset Committee it determines is most appropriate, in order to prepare it for a second and third reading in the plenary. The salary of a programmer in the binary options field is as much as NIS 40, a month, and that's an awful lot for a demobilized soldier. Sign in or Register. He has spared no effort trying to track down his brokers, and believes that both Strongoptions. I got into it because a friend told me that he worked as an investment portfolio manager, and it sounded interesting to me. Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.

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