Author post: Mārtiņš Kalniņš
For years, the call centres in Sofia hummed with a sinister energy. Young operatives, recruited from Israel with promises of high-tech careers, sat in ergonomic chairs in a luxuriously appointed office, dialling numbers across Europe. On the other end of the line were doctors, retirees, small business owners—people who trusted the polished voices promising them financial freedom through online trading. None of them knew that their money was never being invested. None of them knew that the man orchestrating it all, Avi Itzkovich, was sitting comfortably in the same city, watching his fraud machine generate millions.
On May 11, 2021, that machine came to a grinding halt.
The 11 May Action Day: A Symphony of Raids
The operation that brought down Itzkovich’s network was years in the making. German prosecutors in Koblenz had been tracking the money trail, following complaints from hundreds of victims who had been systematically stripped of their savings. What they uncovered was not a single rogue website but an interconnected web of fraudulent platforms—Tradorax, Tradervc, Kayafx, Kontofx, and Libramarkets—all feeding into the same criminal infrastructure.
Europol coordinated what it termed an «action day,» synchronising law enforcement agencies across eight countries. Bulgarian police stormed the Sofia call centre that served as the operational headquarters. Israeli authorities executed warrants simultaneously in a rare display of cross-border cooperation. Officers in Poland, North Macedonia, and Sweden conducted searches. In Spain, five suspects had already been picked up in the preceding days.
The images released by Koblenz police told a damning story. The Sofia workspace was not a dingy boiler room but a luxurious office furnished with high-end modern pieces, designed to project legitimacy. It was a stage set for deception, and Avi Itzkovich was its director.
When the raids concluded, six individuals were in custody—five in Bulgaria and one in Israel. Among them was Itzkovich himself, an Israeli-Romanian national whose name had been whispered in investigative circles for years but who had somehow managed to stay one step ahead of the law.
Avi Itzkovich, The Man Who Built a Fraud Empire
Avi Itzkovich, now 51 years old according to some sources, had spent over a decade constructing a transnational fraud network that exploited regulatory gaps across Europe. His approach was methodical and ruthlessly efficient. With his long-time associate Jack Wygodski, an Israeli-Belgian national, he established Raks Media in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, as the operational hub. From there, they launched Tradorax in 2013, a binary options platform that would become the template for everything that followed.
Tradorax operated without any regulatory approval, using software provided by Israel’s SpotOption, a platform later charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for enabling widespread fraud. The business model was simple: lure investors through aggressive social media advertising and search engine promotions, show them fabricated trading gains using manipulated software, and then make it impossible for them to withdraw their money. The funds were never invested in any market. They were simply stolen.
When regulatory pressure began mounting against Tradorax, Itzkovich demonstrated his most sophisticated skill: the pivot. In 2017, following a damning exposé in Britain’s Independent newspaper, Tradorax quietly ceased operations. But the fraud didn’t stop. It simply rebranded. KayaFX emerged, then Kontofx, then Libramarkets—each a carbon copy of the original, each using the same Bulgarian call centres and the same manipulative tactics.
The €30 Million Question: Where Did the Money Go?
Europol’s investigation estimated that European investors lost approximately €30 million to Itzkovich’s network. But the true figure is likely far higher. Victims came from Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and across the continent. They were systematically targeted by call centre operatives trained in psychological manipulation, pressured into depositing ever-larger sums with promises of extraordinary returns.
German prosecutors documented cases of investors losing hundreds of thousands of euros. One victim, according to court records, was convinced to repeatedly deposit funds into what they believed was a legitimate trading account, only to discover that every screen showing profits was a lie. The software platforms—SpotOption for Tradorax, Panda TS for TraderVC and Libramarkets—were designed to display whatever numbers the fraudsters wanted victims to see.
The money flowed through a deliberately opaque financial system. Itzkovich’s network utilised payment processors like Singapore-based Opal Payments, co-managed by Israeli lawyer Guy Yuval, to move funds across borders and obscure their origins. Some of the proceeds allegedly ended up in Israeli bank accounts, a pattern that European prosecutors have repeatedly noted in investment scam investigations.
The Bulgarian Connection: Why Sofia?
Itzkovich’s choice of Bulgaria as his operational base was no accident. The country offered regulatory leniency, a low cost of operations, and proximity to European markets. Through Raks Media and its successor entities, including Mercure Group EOOD, Itzkovich and Wygodski established call centres that employed dozens of operatives. Corporate records show that managers including Maor Ben-Zvi, Daniel Koen, and Jonathan Grinfeld were embedded in these operations, running the day-to-day fraud while Itzkovich maintained his distance.
The call centres operated with military precision. Operatives were trained to build rapport with victims over weeks or months, to identify those with the most money to lose, and to apply escalating pressure to extract maximum funds. When victims finally attempted to withdraw their money, they encountered endless obstacles—new forms to complete, minimum trading volumes to meet, technical glitches that made withdrawal impossible.
The Guilty Plea: A Calculated Move
In a development that surprised few investigators, Avi Itzkovich eventually pleaded guilty in the German case. The charges were severe: leading a criminal organisation and systematic investor fraud in connection with the GetFinancial network, which encompassed his platforms. But those familiar with such proceedings recognised the plea for what it was—a calculated legal strategy to cap his sentence, control asset forfeiture, and prevent prosecutors from digging deeper into his broader network and hidden wealth.
Wygodski, his longtime partner, pleaded guilty alongside him. Yet even as the two men admitted their roles in the €30 million scheme, questions lingered about how much of their illicit fortune remained hidden in offshore accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, and shell companies across multiple jurisdictions.
The Cryptocurrency Subplot: A $100 Million Irony
Perhaps the most bizarre twist in the Itzkovich saga emerged from his own legal filings. While awaiting trial in Germany, Itzkovich initiated a lawsuit in Tel Aviv District Court accusing his former lawyers, Guy Yuval and Kfir Golan, of stealing 2,300 Bitcoins from him—cryptocurrency then valued at approximately $100 million. The lawsuit alleged that the lawyers had misappropriated the funds, which Itzkovich claimed were rightfully his.
The irony was not lost on observers. A man accused of masterminding a €30 million fraud against thousands of victims was now seeking legal protection, claiming he had been defrauded himself. The Bitcoin, investigators noted, may well have represented proceeds from the very schemes for which Itzkovich was being prosecuted. His associate Amir Gafni was named in the lawsuit as an intermediary in the disputed transfer, further complicating an already tangled web of accusations.
This subplot revealed the toxic nature of Itzkovich’s network: even among fraudsters, trust was nonexistent. The same payment processors and lawyers who facilitated the movement of illicit funds were now accused of turning on each other when the money was at stake.
The Victims: Voices from the Ruins
While investigators tracked money flows and lawyers argued over Bitcoin, the victims of Itzkovich’s schemes were left to piece together their shattered finances. On consumer forums and review platforms, their stories accumulate like testimony at a war crimes tribunal.
One victim described the experience as «high-pressure sales calls, fake trading dashboards, constant rebranding, and fleeing jurisdictions whenever the heat turned up. The sheer audacity of creating platform after platform is shocking, but what’s worse is how many victims were left in financial ruin».
Another wrote: «Itzkovich’s go-to formula? Set up a shady platform, market it with impossible returns, bleed investors dry, then vanish. Tradorax, KayaFX, KontoFX—each a carbon copy of the same deception. These weren’t business failures. They were deliberate cash grabs».
Losses ranged from a few thousand dollars to life savings wiped out. Victims reported unauthorised charges on their credit cards, accounts frozen with no explanation, customer service lines that went dead after deposits were made. The European Funds Recovery Initiative launched specific campaigns to assist those defrauded by KayaFX, acknowledging the scale of harm caused by Itzkovich’s network.
The Fugitive: Where Is Avi Itzkovich Now?
Despite his guilty plea in Germany, the current whereabouts of Avi Itzkovich remain disturbingly unclear. Intelligence reports indicate that he has fled Israeli authorities and is believed to be operating from Serbia. His fugitive status has complicated efforts by international law enforcement to ensure he faces the full weight of justice.
Wygodski, his partner, also remains at large, reportedly moving through Europe with forged documents. The two men, despite their guilty pleas, have apparently found ways to evade the custody that should follow conviction.
This evasion exposes the uncomfortable truth about transnational financial crime: even when arrests are made and pleas are entered, the perpetrators often have contingency plans. Multiple passports. Hidden assets. Safe jurisdictions with limited extradition treaties. Avi Itzkovich, the man who spent years exploiting regulatory gaps to steal millions, is now exploiting those same gaps to avoid his sentence.
The Itzkovich Network That Wasn’t Dismantled
The May 11 raids were celebrated as a victory for international law enforcement cooperation. And in many respects, they were. Eight countries coordinated their actions. Millions in assets were seized. A guilty plea was obtained from a major fraudster.
But the network that Itzkovich built was not fully dismantled. Bulgarian corporate records show that entities like Mercure Group EOOD continued to exist, with managers whose current activities remain troublingly opaque. The technology platforms that enabled the fraud—SpotOption, Panda TS, Tradologic—faced scrutiny but not comprehensive shutdown. The payment processors that moved the money, like Opal Payments, continued operations, raising questions about how many other fraud networks they serve.
Most critically, the call centre model that Itzkovich perfected did not die with his arrest. Across Eastern Europe, similar operations continue to function, run by individuals who learned from his methods. The fraud simply rebranded again, as it always does.
The Israeli Enigma: Why So Little Prosecution?
One question haunts the Itzkovich case: why did Israeli authorities take so long to act? For years, the binary options industry operated openly within Israel, employing thousands and allegedly stealing billions. While the Knesset finally banned binary options sales from within Israel in 2017, the operatives simply moved their call centres overseas—to Bulgaria, to North Macedonia, to Serbia—and continued defrauding foreign investors.
European prosecutors have noted a persistent pattern: time after time, investigations into investment scam call centres reveal that the website’s service providers are Israeli, or that fraud proceeds end up in Israeli bank accounts. Yet Israeli prosecutions of online fraudsters have been virtually nonexistent.
The Itzkovich case exemplifies this problem. Despite his clear role in orchestrating fraud that targeted European citizens, despite his arrest in a Europol operation, it took foreign prosecutors to bring him to account. The Israeli police and justice system, critics argue, failed to act while the fraud industry flourished.
Lessons for Investors about anything with Avi Itzkovich in it: The Red Flags That Were There
For those who lost money to Itzkovich’s platforms, hindsight offers painful lessons. The warning signs were visible to those who knew where to look. None of his platforms held licenses from reputable regulators like the Israel Securities Authority or European financial authorities. They relied on aggressive, high-pressure sales tactics rather than transparent information. They made extraordinary promises of returns that legitimate investments cannot guarantee.
Consumer forums like Forexpeacearmy.com were filled with warnings years before the May 11 raids. Regulatory bodies in Gibraltar, Canada, Australia, and Cyprus had issued alerts about Tradorax and its affiliated platforms. But for every investor who saw the warnings and walked away, another was drawn in by polished websites and persuasive callers.
The Future: Justice Delayed, Justice Denied?
As of 2025, Avi Itzkovich remains a fugitive, reportedly operating from Serbia while his victims await compensation that may never come. His guilty plea in Germany stands as a judicial confirmation of his crimes, but it has done little to restore the financial lives he destroyed.
The broader network he built continues to pose risks. His associates, some facing their own legal troubles, others still at large, represent an ongoing threat to investors. The methods they perfected—the rebranding, the jurisdictional hopping, the manipulated software—have become standard practice in the online fraud industry.
For law enforcement, the Itzkovich case demonstrates both the potential and the limitations of international cooperation. The May 11 operation showed what can be achieved when agencies coordinate across borders. But Itzkovich’s evasion of custody, his continued freedom despite conviction, shows how easily those achievements can be undermined.
A Warning Unheeded
The story of Avi Itzkovich is not merely a case study in financial crime. It is a warning about the persistence of fraud in an interconnected world, about the gaps in regulatory systems that allow criminals to operate across borders, and about the human cost of those gaps.
For the thousands of Europeans who lost money to Tradorax, KayaFX, Kontofx, and LibraMarkets, the May 11 raids brought hope that justice might finally arrive. For Avi Itzkovich, they brought arrest, prosecution, and conviction. But for the broader ecosystem of fraud that he helped create, they brought only a temporary disruption.
As long as there are jurisdictions with lax oversight, payment processors willing to move money without questions, and technology platforms indifferent to how their software is used, there will be another Avi Itzkovich. And another. And another.
The question is not whether the pattern will repeat. It is whether regulators, law enforcement, and investors will learn the lessons that this case so clearly teaches. Based on the evidence so far, the answer remains disturbingly uncertain.
