Binary Options: First-hand Experience in an Industry of Blight

Predatory. Fraud. Scam. These are all words that explain the criminals in the binary options industry. I have first-hand experience in the industry, but it’s probably not what you’re thinking. Binary options weren’t as popular back in the States as they were in Israel.

The industry was booming when I arrived in Israel.

And I was lured into binary options, too – an industry I didn’t know anything about. I was an Oleh Chadash. I was the employee that binary option companies sought. I was surrounded by people, many of which are still my friends, who also landed a job at the same company.

There were a lot of us (Olim, I mean). I thought it was odd, but I had to put food on the table for my family.

A paycheck was a paycheck.

Until it wasn’t.

The company closed shortly after I joined the team. I took a different career path.

Wolves of Tel Aviv spelled out what I always thought was true: binary options was a major scam. Naïve investors got scammed. People lost their life savings. Some people made a fortune, while others lost everything.

Wolves is a good way to describe some of the predators I worked with. You make calls. Convince someone to invest in binary options, make trades, and see where the cards fall.

At first it seems like an almost-glamourous way to gamble until you realize that the people you’re calling are losing everything they’ve ever worked for. Life savings disappear in days. Upper management knew people would lose their money.

I, too, was naïve.

The industry was huge. The atmosphere was fast-paced. The perks were great.

I moved on. The industry moved on. Times of Israel dismantled an industry that defrauded millions of people. Police started to nab “bosses” in an industry that was allowed to flourish in my new home.

Eliran Saada was caught. Victims started to file claims against companies.

The binary options industry allows investors to trade based on price fluctuations. Traders can invest in multiple global markets, but there are a lot of risks and rewards, too. The industry lured investors into continual investments despite these investors losing their money,

Oftentimes, when an investor would want to stop trading, the company would go silent.

Binary options companies often didn’t want the investor to win – they wanted their money. It’s an industry of “wolves,” and a lot of investors lost everything in the process.

They invested in something they fully didn’t understand. But the industry didn’t care.

More people started to get rich – not the investors. Lawyers lured in clients who filed lawsuits against binary option companies. Binary option fraud companies were founded to help victims recover their funds.

MyChargeback, a company working to help people defrauded in the industry, is trying to help investors get some of their money back.

Chargebacks are initiated, which can help investors recover some of their lost money. These chargebacks effectively tell the credit card company or the bank that issued a debit card: “Hey, I was scammed.”

But what do the employees who worked for these predatory companies do? It doesn’t seem wise to add a now outlawed industry to your resume, but that’s a better option than leaving a long gap in employment on your resume.

A lot of people, speaking for myself, were trying to feed their families and were pulled into the industry without knowing that it was a fraud.

Times of Israel’s pursuit of justice finally led to ministers approving a bill last month, outlawing the entire binary options industry in the country.

Billion-dollar fraud has now been dismantled and stopped in its tracks.

And for me, it taught me just how powerful media is and how one post can affect an entire industry. Billions of dollars don’t disappear overnight without complaints rolling in. Regulators knew of the problems, but it took complaints and putting a spotlight on the industry to get Israeli ministers to outlaw the industry.

Times of Israel put an end to all of it with a series of articles outlining the fraud that spread to investors like a plague. And we’re all left with one lesson to learn: “thou shalt not steal.”