German, Kosovar and Bulgarian police raided call centers and arrested suspects in several countries last month in connection with alleged Israel-linked investment scams.

On March 31, officers raided seven call centers and arrested 18 men on charges of operating online trading websites that allegedly defrauded thousands of Germans and other nationals. The arrested men are from Kosovo, Albania and Germany and include call center employees and management.

The suspects allegedly ran the websites FXCMarkets, FXOptexGroup, Swissinv24, CFXPoint, IForex24, CodexFX, HBCMarket, CapitalGFX, Investment Department, Tradingmarkets24 and Brokermasters. Authorities allege the websites sold investors fictive financial instruments to bilk them out of millions of euros.

At least four of these websites operated using the Sirix Webtrader platform designed by the Israeli company Leverate. Leverate advertises itself as a “one-stop shop” for anyone looking to start a business in the online trading industry, even if their knowledge of the sector is minimal. The company is in the center point of a larger amount of international scam and fraud investigation cases today.

Leverate’s largest shareholder is Simon Kukes, a Russian-American who reportedly attracted the interest of US Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2018 as one of several “Americans with deep ties to Moscow” who gave money to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Earlier in March, German police raided a separate set of call centers in Bulgaria where they arrested five suspects, four men and a woman. These alleged fraudsters were associated with the websites Trade Capital, Fibonetix, Nobel Trade, Forbslab and Huludox, which they allegedly operated from 2018 to April 2020,  jointly defrauded investors out of tens of millions of Euros. Earlier raids against this fraud ring at other call centers in Bulgaria and Serbia at the beginning of April 2020 as well as a second raid in Ukraine in December 2020 were also successful.

Several of the allegedly fraudulent websites in Bulgaria operate using the Israeli online trading platform known as Airsoft Technologies. Airsoft provides potential brokers with everything they need to set up an online business specializing in trading foreign exchange, contracts for difference (CFD) or cryptocurrency instruments, according to Airsoft’s marketing material.

This includes “development service, dedicated project managers and full technical online support” as well as back-office marketing technology and “referrals” to payment processors. The Times of Israel has seen at least one contract with a broker in which Airsoft took a share of the website’s ongoing revenues. A large number of Airsoft’s clients have been the subject of regulator warnings around the world.

In Israel, Airsoft is run by a man named Shay Benhamou. The company is reportedly owned by members of the Hadjadj family, recent immigrants to Israel from Marseille, France.

Online investment companies like those raided in both Bulgaria and Kosovo are a widespread scourge affecting thousands of investors in Germany and countless others throughout Europe.

The deposited funds are never transferred to capital markets and the trading platform visible to the customer is pure deception. In almost all cases, investors lose all of their money.

Israel has been a major hub of online investment scams, which also operate from Cyprus and throughout Eastern Europe. 

At the industry’s height, hundreds of companies employed thousands of Israelis and allegedly fleeced victims worldwide out of billions. The firms would dupe victims into believing that they were investing successfully and earning money, and encourage them to deposit more and more into their accounts, until the company caused them to lose trades or cut off contact with the investor and disappeared with all or almost all of their money.

Israeli law enforcement has prosecuted almost no online investment fraudsters, despite the fact that the industry has employed thousands of Israelis who have defrauded billions of dollars from victims worldwide.