Investment fraud case expands to four women

GREENBELT, MD. — They followed a call script for reassuring investors: A broker boasted of winning up to 95 percent of his trades. Sales representatives promised a client she would be a millionaire within a year if she didn’t withdraw her five-figure investment.

“If you win, I win,” the broker told the woman, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

Those were just some of the lies told to victims of a multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme that has led to federal charges in Maryland against four women who worked for an Israel-based company, authorities say.

Yukom Communications employees pretended to be from other countries, lied about their professional qualifications and adopted “stage names,” authorities say. They falsely guaranteed returns of up to 40 percent. And they didn’t tell investors that the company handling their “binary options” trades only made money if its customers lost money, according to the FBI.

A federal trial had been scheduled to start in Maryland on Jan. 8 for Lee Elbaz, an Israeli citizen who served as CEO of Yukom, which provided sales and marketing services for internet-based businesses with the brand names BinaryBook and BigOption. But a judge agreed Dec. 18 to postpone her trial indefinitely.

Elbaz, 37, was indicted in March on three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was arrested in 2017 after traveling to New York.

Since then, federal prosecutors in Maryland have filed related charges against three other women who worked for Yukom. Shira Uzan and Liora Welles were charged this month with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The same charge was filed in November against another defendant, Lissa Mel.

Authorities believe the fraud scheme cost investors tens of millions of dollars.