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The ruse of Israeli swindler Gala Barak, owner of call centers in Serbia and Bulgaria who deceived citizens across Western Europe, causing them to invest money in currency trading on non-existent internet platforms, once again proved that Serbia is fertile for this type of machinations and fraud. Before them, a similar case was recorded in Nis, where 11 hackers suspected of participating in identical fraud were arrested.
Gal Barak (33) started his “business” in 2015 in Tel Aviv, and when Israel introduced stringent laws in 2017 to prevent fraudulent companies from harming investors around the world, Barak turned to the Balkans and opened the first companies in Bulgaria. and then in Serbia.
Their companies mainly employed young people, students, who knew foreign languages well, mainly English and German. The task of its agents was to persuade investors with a “deeper pocket” to invest in currency trading.
Thanks to Aleksandar Ignjatović, a Düsseldorf-born Serb who was also an agent in several of Barak’s call centers, Ignjatović discovered the fraud by calling Germany’s criminal police and saying that he would open his soul if they in turn provided security for his family. and the.
According to BIRN, Ignjatovic was found dead in a hotel room in Bulgaria in January this year, a few months before he was supposed to testify at Barak’s trial, and heart problems were cited as the official cause of death. Ignjatovic’s family never received an autopsy report, except that they had the opportunity to read it once, but not to take it with them.
“He was looking for work,” reads a transcript of his statement to the German police, which BIRN had access to.
– A friend called me and said “Come, you can easily earn money here” – said Ignjatović. It was the beginning of 2018.
The job seemed simple: I was working in a call center and was supposed to mainly call older people from Germany, Austria and other EU countries and try to persuade them to invest money in online currency trading.
– All employees had to see the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”, so they prepared us for work – Ignjatović told the German police. Martin Scorsese’s film follows the career of a stockbroker, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his many illegal jobs on Wall Street.
At Cactus Marketing, which Barak opened in 2017 in Belgrade, there were two types of agents: one who called people and made contracts (conversion agents) and the other who took their money (withholding agents). His type of work was different, but so was his income.
Ignjatovic testified that upon arrival at work, conversion agents would receive lists of 200 to 500 people to call. Those who agreed to invest the money would be transferred to the jurisdiction of so-called “withholding agents” who were tasked with persuading them to pay as much money as possible. Almost 20 percent of the guests.
At first, as a rule, victims paid amounts of around 250-300 euros, after which they were persuaded by specially trained officers to invest larger amounts.
Conversion agents at Cactus had fixed salaries of 560 and 800 euros, but there was also a bonus system for the average agent to earn around 1000 euros.
Stopping hackers in Nis
A similar case took place in Serbia in early April 2020, when the Serbian police arrested five members of the criminal network who worked for Gala Barak. On the same day, four more members of the group were arrested in Bulgaria. The Serbian police did not announce the names of the detainees, but only the initials: ZM (37), MB (36), FI (31), S. Š. (49) and A. Đ. (26)
Proof that this type of fraud is widespread in Serbia is the action of the US FBI in which an independent “cell” of Gala Barak was exposed, just one of many in Serbia.
At the request of the FBI, 11 people were arrested in Nis two months ago. Based on officially released information, it could not be concluded what was the reason for his arrest, but BIRN finds that binary options fraud was the motive.
When questioned by the FBI office in Belgrade, BIRN reporters received the response that the details of the investigation and the indictment were not available to the public.
What is known so far is that the US authorities have submitted a request to the Serbian judiciary for the extradition of 11 programmers from Nis, suspected of defrauding US citizens out of 70 million euros through fake internet platforms. They are suspected of conspiracy to commit crimes, fraud and money laundering, for which, under US law, they face up to 20 years in prison.
It is unofficially known that developers, who are between 25 and 35 years old, are suspected of creating investment platforms for so-called binary options over the Internet. Then they found foreign investors, created false business transactions, false receipts for withdrawals and money transfers. They supposedly then closed the fake platforms and after a while they opened new ones with the same working method already elaborated. They are suspected of being involved in these activities from 2011 to June 2020.
As confirmed to “Blic” in the Belgrade High Court, seven of the detainees only have Serbian citizenship, while the others have passports from other countries as well.
A pregnant woman from the Philippines is also detained.
An Israeli sentenced in Germany
Gal Barak was arrested by order of Europol on January 30, 2019 at the Kalotina border crossing, while trying to escape from Bulgaria to Serbia. The trial in Vienna began on July 8 and ended on September 1, 2020. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
To the observation of the Austrian investigative bodies that there is no indication of actual trading in securities, and no indication of the presentation of the actual betting platform, Gal Barak replied: “Trading is gambling and betting is trading.” During the trial, Barak defended himself by saying that it was a kind of gambling house and that customers knew what they were getting into.
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