Orel Asformas

A summary of what happened?

Orel Asformas, born in April 1991, is an Israeli national identified as one of the ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) behind the binary options scam known as GoldmanOptions, operated by DAO Group Ltd. This fraudulent scheme, active around 2016, involved deceptive trading practices that defrauded investors.

Key Allegations and Involvement:

• GoldmanOptions Scam:
  • GoldmanOptions was a binary options platform that lured investors with promises of high returns through binary options trading. However, it functioned as a scam, manipulating trades and preventing withdrawals to ensure investor losses.
  • The operation was managed by DAO Group Ltd., registered in the Marshall Islands, with Asformas, along with associates Ariel Hai Mazooz and David Mor, as the primary beneficiaries. Official company records listed Seychelles citizens Genevieve Magnan and Jonathan Bibi as directors, serving as figureheads to obscure the true ownership.
    FinTelegram
• Regulatory Actions:
  • In October 2016, the Czech National Bank issued a warning against GoldmanOptions and its operator, DAO Processing Ltd., highlighting the company’s unauthorized financial activities.
    FinTelegram
• Operational Structure:
  • DAO Group Ltd. was the sole shareholder of DAO Processing Ltd., a UK-registered entity with Belize citizen Paula Gina Jonch-Olmez as director. The organizational setup utilized offshore jurisdictions and nominee directors to conceal the identities of the actual operators.
    FinTelegram
• Facilitation by Payment Service Providers:
  • The scam’s financial transactions were facilitated by payment service providers such as Payotech Ltd. (operating under the PayObin brand) and Moneta International UAB in Lithuania. These companies, associated with individuals like Eyal Nachum and Tamir Zoltovsky, processed payments for GoldmanOptions, enabling the fraudulent activities.
    FinTelegram

Orel Asformas played a significant role in orchestrating the GoldmanOptions binary options scam, which defrauded investors through deceptive trading practices and complex corporate structures designed to obscure true ownership and evade regulatory scrutiny. The involvement of complicit payment service providers further facilitated the scheme, highlighting the challenges in combating financial fraud across multiple jurisdictions.

Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)

Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.

What was Orel Asformas trying to hide?

Orel Asformas‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling Orel Asformas in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Orel Asformas may be trying to remove from the internet –

Investigative Report on Orel Asformas and His Role in Binary Options Scams

Introduction

Orel Asformas, an Israeli national born in 1991, has been implicated as a key figure behind the fraudulent binary options scheme operated under the brand GoldmanOptions. Alongside associates Ariel Hai Mazooz and David Mor, Asformas utilized offshore entities, deceptive marketing practices, and complicit payment processors to orchestrate a multi-jurisdictional financial scam that defrauded unsuspecting investors. This report delves into the intricate details of his alleged involvement, the operational structure of the scam, regulatory warnings, and the broader implications of such fraudulent activities.

1. The GoldmanOptions Binary Options Scam

GoldmanOptions was marketed as a sophisticated binary options trading platform, promising high returns on investments through short-term trades. In reality, it functioned as a classic scam, manipulating trades, misleading investors, and blocking withdrawals to ensure financial losses for its victims.

1.1. Deceptive Business Model

• False Promises:
  • The platform targeted investors with aggressive marketing campaigns, emphasizing low-risk, high-reward opportunities. Many victims were persuaded to deposit significant sums, believing they were participating in legitimate trading activities.
• Manipulated Trades:
  • Internal controls reportedly allowed operators to manipulate trading outcomes, ensuring that most investors lost their funds.
• Blocked Withdrawals:
  • When investors attempted to withdraw their earnings or initial deposits, the platform frequently blocked transactions, claiming technical issues or policy violations.

1.2. Operational Oversight

GoldmanOptions was operated by DAO Group Ltd., a Marshall Islands-registered company. The complex structure of DAO Group was deliberately designed to obscure its true ownership and evade regulatory scrutiny.

2. The Role of Orel Asformas

2.1. Asformas as a Beneficial Owner

Orel Asformas, along with his associates, was identified as one of the ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) of DAO Group Ltd. and its subsidiaries. Despite efforts to conceal his involvement, investigative reports linked him directly to the fraudulent operations.

2.2. Offshore Entities and Nominee Directors

To shield his identity and complicate investigations, Asformas utilized a network of offshore companies and nominee directors:

• DAO Group Ltd.:
  • Registered in the Marshall Islands, DAO Group Ltd. served as the primary entity behind GoldmanOptions.
  • Official company documents listed Seychelles citizens Genevieve Magnan and Jonathan Bibi as directors, acting as figureheads for the true operators.
• DAO Processing Ltd.:
  • A UK-registered subsidiary of DAO Group Ltd., this entity managed customer funds and operational processes.
  • Paula Gina Jonch-Olmez, a Belize citizen, served as the nominal director, further masking the real owners.

3. Facilitation by Payment Service Providers

Payment service providers (PSPs) played a critical role in enabling the financial transactions for the scam, processing deposits from victims and transferring funds offshore.

3.1. Payotech Ltd. and Moneta International

Two prominent PSPs implicated in the scheme were:

• Payotech Ltd. (PayObin):
  • Operated under the brand PayObin, this company processed payments for GoldmanOptions. Investigators linked its operations to a network of fraudulent schemes.
• Moneta International UAB:
  • A Lithuania-based payment processor associated with Eyal Nachum and Tamir Zoltovsky, Moneta International was another key facilitator of GoldmanOptions’ financial activities.

3.2. Financial Laundering

The involvement of PSPs allowed the operators to launder funds through multiple jurisdictions, making it difficult for regulators and law enforcement agencies to trace the money trail.

4. Regulatory Warnings and Legal Actions

4.1. Czech National Bank Warning

In October 2016, the Czech National Bank issued a warning against GoldmanOptions and DAO Processing Ltd., identifying their financial activities as unauthorized and potentially fraudulent. This regulatory alert highlighted the lack of proper licensing and oversight for the company’s operations.

4.2. Investigative Reports

Multiple investigative publications, including FinTelegram, exposed the operations of DAO Group Ltd., detailing its connections to Orel Asformas and his associates. These reports brought significant public attention to the scale and sophistication of the fraud.

5. Impact on Victims

The fraudulent activities orchestrated by Asformas and his associates caused substantial financial losses for victims across multiple countries. Key impacts included:

• Financial Ruin:
  • Many victims lost life savings, believing they were investing in legitimate trading opportunities.
• Emotional Distress:
  • The betrayal of trust and the inability to recover funds left victims with long-lasting emotional and psychological scars.
• Difficulty in Legal Recourse:
  • The use of offshore entities and complex payment structures made it challenging for victims to pursue legal action or recover their losses.

6. Broader Implications of the Case

6.1. Challenges in Regulating Binary Options

The GoldmanOptions scam underscores the vulnerabilities in global financial systems that allow fraudulent operators to exploit regulatory gaps:

• Jurisdictional Arbitrage:
  • By incorporating in jurisdictions with minimal oversight, operators like Asformas evade stringent regulatory scrutiny.
• Weak Enforcement Mechanisms:
  • Even when regulators issue warnings, the lack of cross-border enforcement limits their ability to shut down fraudulent schemes effectively.

6.2. Complicity of Payment Service Providers

The role of payment processors in enabling scams highlights the need for stricter due diligence and monitoring:

• PSPs must implement robust anti-money laundering (AML) measures to prevent misuse by fraudulent operators.
• Regulators should hold PSPs accountable for their role in facilitating financial crimes.

7. Conclusion

Orel Asformas’ involvement in the GoldmanOptions binary options scam exemplifies the complexities of combating financial fraud in a globalized economy. Through sophisticated schemes, offshore structures, and complicit payment processors, Asformas and his associates orchestrated a scam that defrauded countless investors and exposed significant weaknesses in regulatory frameworks.

While investigative reports and regulatory warnings have shed light on his activities, the full extent of Asformas’ operations remains challenging to unravel due to the layered corporate structures and jurisdictional hurdles. This case underscores the urgent need for enhanced international cooperation, regulatory vigilance, and accountability to protect consumers and uphold the integrity of financial systems.

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of Orel Asformas (or actors working on behalf of Orel Asformas), we will inform Orel Asformas of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that Orel Asformas may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from Orel Asformas, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to Orel Asformas to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.

Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –

Since Orel Asformas made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally

We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which Orel Asformas is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for Orel Asformas

Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.

Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.

Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”  Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).

Is Orel Asformas Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. Orel Asformas used multiple approaches to remove unwanted material from review sites and Google’s search results. Thanks to protections allowing freedom of speech in the United States, there are very few legal ways to do this. Orel Asformas could not eliminate negative reviews or search results that linked to them without a valid claim of defamation, copyright infringement, or some other clear breach of the law.

Faced with these limitations, some companies like Orel Asformas have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. Orel Asformas is certainly keeping interesting company here….

The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.

Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.

Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi

The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.

Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.

As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by Orel Asformas creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.

The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.

The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.

In committing numerous offences, Orel Asformas either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Orel Asformas, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.

The Reputation Laundering

Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.

The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.

In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.

This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.

Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. Orel Asformas is in great company ….

What else is Orel Asformas hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Orel Asformas] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)

To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on Orel Asformas that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].

All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.