How Israel Became A Haven For International Fraudsters, Crooks, And Paedophiles

Israel is home to thousands of international criminals accused or found guilty in a second country for committing a wide-variety of crimes.

Many of the individuals are dual-nationals who have taken advantage of their ability to move seamlessly between Israel and their second country of citizenship to commit crimes and, in some cases, evade justice.

The scale of the criminality, and the volume of cases (relative to the population of Israel), is astonishing.

I was prompted to look into this after finding out that Timur Mindich, the ultimate financial beneficiary of the Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point, fled to Israel last year just days before being charged as the mastermind behind a $100 million embezzlement scheme involving Ukraine's state nuclear power company. Mindich also happens to be the co-owner of Kvartal 95 Studio, the production company founded by Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mindich, like many in this article, has taken advantage of Israel’s controversial Law of Return which allows any Jew in the world to claim Israeli citizenship without having to renounce their home country passport.

Some of those accused and charged have made minor or international headlines, some haven’t, but the scale of the issue was such that I thought it would be useful to document my research here.

In some cases, Israel has refused to extradite the wanted person despite requests from the country in which the crimes were committed.

Staying on Ukraine and refused extradition requests, we have Oleksandr Dubilet, the former Chairman of the Board of Ukraine’s PrivatBank. Dubilet is currently a fugitive in Israel and the subject of multiple criminal investigations and extradition requests for his role in embezzling at least $100 million dollars following the 2016 privatisation of PrivatBank. To date, Israel has refused to extradite him.

Israel as a bolthole for financial fraudsters is a common theme. One of the most significant SEC fraud cases in recent years involved over 150 Israelis (some with dual US-Israeli nationality, others not), wanted for their role in conducting binary options fraud worth upwards of $100 billion.

Binary options are a type of financial bet where the outcome is essentially all-or-nothing. Instead of buying a stock or currency, you bet on whether the price of a stock or currency will be above or below a certain level at a specific time. While not illegal, the Israeli companies were accused of rigging and manipulating prices and expiry times and using fake identities.

For a decade until 2017, Israel was the global centre for the online binary-options industry. The Israeli police failed to investigate, so hundreds of cases were filed in Israeli courts by people from dozens of countries who had been defrauded.

One of the most notorious fraudsters was Lee Elbaz, the CEO of Yukom Communications, a dual US-Israeli national. She was arrested in 2017 when on holiday in New York and eventually convicted of wire fraud and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Other prime Israeli movers in the binary options fraud business were Yossi Herzog and Yakov Cohen, both connected with Yukom and other binary options front companies. They were charged with $140 million fraud in 2019 but despite being under a DOJ criminal investigation the US choose not to pursue their extradition, while other Israeli co-conspirators in the Yukom case have joined Elbaz in serving jail sentences.

Other Israeli kingpins in the binary options sector include Ran Amiran and Malhaz Patarkazishvili, also known as Pini Peter. They were charged with $100 million fraud by the SEC for their role managing the fraudulent options trader Spot Option. Because it was a civil case and the DOJ wasn’t involved they weren’t eligible for extradition from Israel and continue to reside in Israel. It was reported in 2021 that Amiran had reached a financial settlement for the damages with the SEC, likely so that he could once again travel to the US. Peter, a friend of Netanyahu’s, remains unrepentant, despite being ordered to pay the US government $87 million, a judgement he has appealed against.

Pini Peter with Netanyahu

There are hundreds of other Israel-linked individuals charged with binary options fraud identified on the SEC website, including joint German-Israel nationals Gil and Raz Beserglik who ran binary options call centres out of Germany to scam people.

Another hotbed of Israeli fraud is the moving industry, where companies pose as legitimate household goods movers only to steal belongings or withhold items unless additional payment is made. One of the largest "hostage load" prosecutions was of Advanced Moving Systems, an Israeli-run company which lured customers with artificially low moving estimates and then extorted them by holding their household goods hostage until they paid fraudulently inflated prices. Many of the dozens of people behind the scam remain wanted, with their current location unknown. Dozens of other Israelis connected with fraudulent moving companies also remain on the run, and have likely fled to Israel. (Incidentally, the Israelis arrested by the FBI on September 11th and quickly released were working for a Mossad counterintelligence operation using a moving company as cover. But that’s another story).

Penny stock fraud is another rich seam for Israeli crooks. This type of fraud is when the stocks of small companies trading under $5 a share are marketed to people, often older and uniformed, using high pressure sales marketing tactics with the caller promising guaranteed returns, often claiming to have inside information. One of the largest in recent years saw dual US-Israeli citizen Sharone “Barry” Perlstein and numerous Israeli co-conspirators charged with creating at least 15 fraudulent public shell companies to sell millions of dollars worth of penny stocks using fraudulent tactics. Previous penny stock fraud cases had also implicated Israeli nationals.

The diamond industry has also attracted a fair share of Israeli swindlers. One of the most well-known is Mordechai “Moti” Ferder, a California-based luxury jeweller at the centre of one of the largest fraud scandals in the American jewellery industry. Ferder was accused of juicing his company’s accounts to boost the valuation before selling to an investment company, while in reality he was racking up liabilities worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2025, with an FBI investigation underway, Ferder fled California for Tel Aviv.

Then there is Gery Shalon the Georgia-born Israeli responsible for hacking JP Morgan and carrying out the largest theft of customer data from an American financial institution in history.

Outside the fraud cases, Israel also attracts politicians attempting to shield themselves from justice in their home countries. One of the most notorious and ongoing cases is that of Tomás Zerón, the former director of the Criminal Investigation Agency of Mexico. Zerón is accused by Mexican authorities of having direct involvement in the kidnap, torture, and likely murder of dozens of university students. Often known as the Iguala mass kidnapping and considered one of Mexico’s most heinous human rights abuse cases, in 2014 forty-three leftist students were kidnapped on their way to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. Zerón is said to have known or ordered the students to be handed over to a cartel group to be murdered and their remains disposed of. Zerón fled to Israel and despite an extradition order, an Interpol red notice and numerous requests from Mexico to hand him over, Israel has refused, reportedly as punishment for Mexico’s criticism of Israel at the UN.

Another Mexican diplomat who fled to Israel is Andrés Roemer. Formerly Mexico's Ambassador to UNESCO based in Paris, and Consul General of Mexico in San Francisco, Roemer fled to Israel in 2021 after being accused by 61 women of rape and sexual assault. Mexico has demanded his extradition, but he remains in Israel.

Roemer is not alone. Israel is a haven for Jewish sex criminals and paedophiles to hide from justice, with the phenomena so prevalent that even CBS News has written about it. Probably the most famous names associated with fleeing to Israel after being accused of sex crimes are the Hollywood directors Brett Rattner and Bryan Singer. Rush Hour director Rattner, a good friend of Netanyahu’s, fled to Israel in 2023 after being accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct and assault on set.

Rattner with Netanyahu

Singer, director of two X-Men films and 90s hit The Usual Suspects, fled to Israel around 2020 after being accused of sexual abuse, including abuse of children.

Israel is a magnet for criminals of all flavours, and this brief compendium is the mere tip of an iceberg. The Law of Return, known to be policed very lightly, is a gateway allowing Jews to use their dual nationality to commit crimes and then swerve justice under an ethno-supremacist legal regime set up to protect them. Some succeed in avoiding justice, some don’t.

Of course one of the biggest ironies in seeing Israelis prosecuted by the US legal system for financial crimes is that the biggest Israeli criminals of all, those charged with committing the highest crimes possible, are not pursued by the US justice system. Netanyahu is free to visit the US, as he did last week, without fear of arrest for his role in ordering the genocide of Gaza and the systematic destruction of life. Destruction that continues to this day, with more children slaughtered just yesterday.

While Netanyahu’s treatment by US legal authorities might be different to the treatment meted out to a binary options trader, a country that acts with a smug, lawless arrogance raises and attracts those very same people.

Impunity begets impunity. A place founded on thievery draws thieves to it naturally.

As I have written about before, for a future where justice is pre-eminent, where morality means something and our collective humanity is restored, we must de-Zionise the world and dismantle Israel.

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