Following our report from yesterday that a joint FBI-Israel Police operation resulted in the arrests of 26 suspects in a forex and crypto investment scam run from Israel that targeted (mainly) US retail traders, sources in Israel have reported that two of those arrested were named as Guy Grinberg (pictured above, from his LinkedIn page) and Snir Hananya.

Police asked for the remand of Grinberg and Hananya to be extended, following a police raid late Tuesday that included the aforementioned arrests as well as the seizure of computers, storage devices, and other company documents from the Tel Aviv offices where the purported scam operated. The police’s anti-fraud unit is combing through the seized material, to add evidence to its case against those arrested.

While little is known about Hananya, the 47-year old Guy Grinberg is a better known personality in the Israeli high tech scene after acting as VP Business Development from 2006-2009 at Koolanoo, an Israeli-Chinese startup which attracted tens of millions of dollars in venture capital in attempting to build a social media network in China.

Lately, Mr. Grinberg’s LinkedIn profile shows him since 2015 as VP Business Development of an unnamed “forex” business. His latest social media posts read “Looking for live crypto cfd leads!!!”, and “Looking for fx retention expert !!! #fxbroker #sales”.

Israeli Hebrew language media described more about the alleged scams, whereby the Israel based operation targeted retail traders in the US and several other countries worldwide. The targets were usually initially offered small investments in cryptocurrencies and forex instruments, with the traders often “winning” modest profits. Those small profits built initial trust with clients and were then used as a hook to get the traders to deposit much larger amounts, as large as several hundred thousand dollars, which eventually disappeared.

TV news sources in Israel have reported that most of those arrested are sales and retention employees, who have all claimed to have no knowledge of any supposed fraud. They are claiming to have been offered high-paying positions to legally deal with clients who want to trade forex and crypto.

We will continue to follow this story as it develops.