The wolves of Tel Aviv: Israel’s vast, amoral binary options scam exposed
When Dan G. immigrated from Australia to Israel in 2012, he did not anticipate becoming involved in an international internet scam.
He was working in the administration of a factory in Australia when his boss died suddenly, and, at the age of 28, he realized it was a good time for him to move to Israel. “I thought, ‘I’m free, no strings attached, I can go.’”
Dan enrolled in Jerusalem’s Ulpan Etzion to learn Hebrew, then moved to the vibrant and bustling city of Tel Aviv, where he landed a series of minimum-wage jobs for NIS 25 (a little over $6) an hour: chopping vegetables in a restaurant, driving a disabled person, working the night shift at a hot-dog stand.
But in a city with sky-high rents and a cost of living relative to salaries (PDF) second only to Japan, Dan could not survive. He heard that jobs in an industry called binary options paid twice what he was earning, plus commission.
“As soon as I started looking for a job, I was getting calls from binary options companies every day,” he recalls. “They dominate the job advertisement space.”
