Israel online news source The Times of Israel is reporting that Israeli state prosecutors are dropping their case against Roey Hayun, one of the founders of one-time Binary Options industry leader 24option.com.

The Times had reported in early 2022 that Roey Hayun’s luxury home had been raided by Israeli police (in late 2021), with millions of dollars worth of assets seized, including the home, several luxury vehicles, cash and jewelry. At the time, Israeli police said they suspected Roey Hayun of laundering over $65 million of fraud proceeds from the 24option.com website.

The action was coordinated between Israeli and German police, who also announced at the time that they were collaborating with Israeli police on an investigation into a suspected multimillion euro fraud though 24option. According to Cologne police, the 24option.com site was entirely fraudulent and manipulated investors’ trades so that investors always ended up losing. 24option at the time had a call center in Cologne as well as offices in Cyprus and Israel.

However now, The Times is reporting that in a letter sent to Roey Hayun’s attorney on April 25, state prosecutor Amit Levin wrote,

“After a pretrial hearing in front of the director of the state prosecutor’s cyberunit, Haim Wismonsky, and after negotiations over the past several months, it has been decided to close the case against you.”

Israel police have now reportedly unfrozen Roey Hayun’s bank accounts, and returned millions of dollars of real estate, cars and jewelry to him.

When approached, Israeli authorities refused to provide a reason for the charges being dropped. The Times reported that Roey Zweig, a Justice Ministry spokesman, wrote in an email,

“The reason for closing a case is not publicized to the media except in cases involving sexual or grievous violent crimes.”

24option was one of the few licensed Binary Options brokers when it operated, holding a CySEC CIF license in Cyprus which it was able to passport to the UK (pre-Brexit) and throughout the EU. However 24option was banned in the UK becoming one of the few brokers which lost its UK passporting rights in mid 2020, and eventually also lost its CySEC license.