NRGbinary helped punters bet on currency movements. When they lost their money, they discovered the business was hiding in the gaps between regulators.

RAMAT GAN, Israel – In early 2013, a young Israeli businessman registered a web domain in London for a company called NRGbinary.com. The online options trading website offered clients the opportunity to make large amounts of money from simple bets on the movement of financial markets, stocks and commodities.

 But there were a few peculiarities to the company. While it was initially registered in Britain, NRGbinary was run from Israel and sold its products to clients in the Middle East, Canada and South Africa. Within months it had shifted its registration to Cyprus and then to the Seychelles.

Within two years, according to London lawyers and scores of former clients, around a dozen of whom spoke to Reuters, NRGbinary and other companies linked to the same parent group had defrauded hundreds of people out of anywhere between $10,000 and several hundreds of thousands of dollars – millions in all.

Guy Galboiz, the 37-year old who registered the website in his name, declined to comment. Reuters also tried to speak to others at NRGbinary but email and phone messages were not returned. 

The case of NRGbinary is another example of the way scammers can hide in the gaps between regulators in different jurisdictions. Israeli regulators say they never...read more at Reuters