The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed fraud charges against Israel-based binary options firm SpotOption and its two top executives, Ran Amiran and Pini Peter. Based on the news posted online by Israel-based digital newspaper The Times of Israel, SpotOption is the main binary options company in Israel.
This firm is reportedly at the heart of a multi-year scam that victimized investors worldwide and pocketed billions of dollars. We are eager to share this fresh news relating to binary options trading with our readers. We believe that it can aid them to be watchful against scammers.
The SEC’s complaint indicated that SpotOption and its owners Amiran and Peter are behind the fraud banned by Knesset, Israel’s legislative body. The US government bureau charged the fraudulent Israeli binary options company on Friday, April 16. The complaint is in the file in Nevada’s federal district court.
SpotOption is headquartered in Ramat Gan, Israel. It provided the platforms for a huge number of companies that allegedly perpetrated international embezzlement. Moreover, SpotOption’s two largest shareholders were Peter, also known as Malhaz Pinhas Patarkazishvili, and Amiran.
According to the SEC’s allegation in its civil enforcement action, these two shareholders and their binary options trading firm defrauded American investors from April 2012 to August 2017. These people duped the investors out of more than US$100 million using binary options or the risky securities digitally sold in a questionable and unregistered manner.
The SEC further alleged that SpotOption employed manipulative and deceptive tactics, such as rigging the trading platforms, to ensure that the investors lost their hard-earned funds. Based on SpotOption’s marketing material, hundreds of websites utilized it being the largest binary options trading platform.
Additionally, this company, which later altered its name to Spot Tech House Limited, had brokers that employed thousands of Israeli nationals. Between 2014 and 2016, SpotOption secretly received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of government funding to expand its operations in China.
This event was reportedly amid itself being reported as a scam and the Israeli regulators working to ban it. The SEC accusation also stated that SpotOption targeted thousands of US investors, including retirees.
Many of these victims reportedly lost most of their hard-earned money, including, in some instances, hundreds of thousands of dollars saved for retirement. As these investors lost their funds, SpotOption and its partners, on the other hand, raked in millions of dollars in profits, per the SEC indictment.
We feel relieved that the SEC has already filed charges against SpotOption and its administrators. We believe that this company’s victims can finally see justice not too long from now. We also believe in and trust the SEC because it can pursue global actors who defraud American investors and those from other countries through the help of its international regulatory collaborators.
Moreover, we want to advise our readers, both existing and potential binary options investors, to stay guided and well-informed. Binary options scams are worldwide. We hope that our readers will always keep themselves abreast with the latest news and relevant information to safeguard themselves against these perpetrators of binary options fraud.