Court lifts gag order on names of alleged forex scammers wanted in

The names of four men arrested near Tel Aviv last month amid a series of raids targeting alleged fraudulent investment schemes have been unsealed by a Jerusalem court, ahead of their possible extradition to Germany.

Pavel Kotler, 47, of Holon; Yuri Dashevsky, 33, of Kfar Saba; Nimrod Blachman, 33, hometown unknown; and Chen Malka, 31, of Tel Aviv were being held on suspicion of binary options, forex and cryptocurrency fraud against German citizens.

The four were among 15 people detained by police in an October 20 raid on a Petah Tikva call center initiated by German police, who launched an international blitz on Israel-linked investment frauds last month, along with the FBI.

The arrests were carried out at the request of German prosecutors, who said they plan to ask for the men to be extradited to stand trial in Germany.

A Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court judge initially acceded to requests from the four men’s lawyers that their names not be publicized so as not to damage their reputations, but the gag order has now been lifted.

The men are accused of being part of an organized gang that from 2015 to 2019 allegedly ran the websites IntegraOption, SolidCFD, TradeSolid, BitCapitalMarkets, GetFinancial, ProCapitalMarkets, NordCapitalMarkets, ProfitsTrade, FXPace, AccepTrade and GainFinTech.

According to the public prosecutor’s office in Bamberg, Germany, these websites are all connected and were run by these four men and their associates over the internet and from call centers in Israel and in Tbilisi, Yerevan and Chisinau — the capitals of Georgia, Armenia and Moldova, respectively.

Dollars seized in an October 19 raid on an Israeli-run call center (Source: Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Bamberg)

On October 19, Israeli police reportedly detained and questioned a lawyer who was thought to have taken part in the management of the websites run by the suspects in the Petah Tikva call center, according to Israel’s Posta crime news website. The questioning was reportedly carried out at the behest of German police.

Seven individuals who were part of the same group as those in Petah Tikva were arrested in Georgia on October 19, according to an October 27 press release issued by the public prosecutor in Bamberg, Germany. Three of the people arrested in Georgia were women.

In addition, in 2019 the group allegedly ran the alleged recovery room scams FXLaws and Tradelegal in which they offered to help victims of scams recover their money — for a fee. These websites allegedly took victims’ money without helping them, German prosecutors charged.

The suspects allegedly persuaded people around the world to invest money in forex, binary options, and other financial instruments. But instead of actually investing customers’ money as promised, the suspects allegedly used…