Appeal case brought by binary options fraudster Lee Elbaz faces further delays
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has once again delayed the appeal case brought by binary options fraudster Lee Elbaz, who is challenging a 20-year prison term.
After shifting the deadline in Elbaz’s case by 30 days to March 10, 2021, the DOJ has requested another 30-day delay to file its response to Elbaz’s arguments for her appeal from the prison sentence.
In the motion filed with the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on March 1, 2021, the DOJ says the record in this case is voluminous. Ms Elbaz was convicted at trial of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and substantive wire fraud counts. The appellate record, which includes a number of hearings into addition to the trial transcripts, consists of over 11,600 pages. Also, the government attorney assigned to handle this appeal was not trial counsel, and therefore needs time to become familiar with this large record.
Finally, the government attorney assigned to this case has not been able to focus exclusively on the Elbaz case. Work on the Capitol riot cases has required – and will continue to require – significant attention.
The Court has granted the DOJ’s motion and now the response is due April 9, 2021.
Let’s recall that, in this appeal case, Elbaz, the former CEO of Yukom Communications, seeks to vacate her sentence of 240 months in prison.
According to the evidence presented at trial, Elbaz and her co-conspirators fraudulently sold and marketed binary options to investors located in the United States and throughout the world through two websites, known as BinaryBook and BigOption. The evidence showed that in her role as CEO of Yukom, Elbaz, along with her co-conspirators and subordinates, misled investors using
BinaryBook and BigOption by falsely claiming to represent the interests of investors when, in fact, the owners of BinaryBook and BigOption profited when investors lost money.
Representatives of BinaryBook and BigOption, working under Elbaz’s supervision, misrepresented the terms of so-called “bonuses,” “risk free trades” and “insured trades,” and deceptively used these supposed benefits in a manner that in fact harmed investors.
The fraudulent scheme led investors to purchase more than $100 million in binary options.