An alleged Israel-headquartered fraud network has reportedly defrauded more than 4,000 Australians, luring them to investment scams through fake news articles and false promises of AI-assisted trading, according to an investigation by local news outlet ABC.
The group operated from central Tel Aviv, and it has been linked to call centres in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Macedonia and Israel.
The alleged fraudulent network has been running since at least 2021, and investigators at the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) estimate the victims of this particular ring lost “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Read more: Investment Scams Top Fraud Rankings as Artifical Intelligence Drives $62 Billion in Losses
Operating with a Global Network
Although the Australian news agency traced the fraudulent activities to a local company that allegedly laundered the ill-gotten proceeds, the accountancy firm, director, and sole shareholder all cut ties with the company while investigators questioned them.
The company's director even identified the real owner of the Aussie business, who is Israeli and denied “any fraudulent activity.” The “real owner’s” name, however, was absent from all Aussie filings. Interestingly, he later tried to distance himself from the Aussie company.
His ‘marketing’ company, whose main business on paper is selling visa services via telemarketing, operated call centres in Israel, Cyprus, South Africa, Spain and the Philippines.
The news outlet investigators linked a South African affiliate to process payments from an investment scam in 2021. The Israeli owner, however, denied involvement “in processing any of such payments.”
Another company linked to this same person allegedly received payments from Australian victims in 2024.
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Investment Scams Are Rampant
Investment scams remain Australia's costliest fraud category, with losses climbing from $328 million in 2020 to $945 million in 2024, and $837.7 million in 2025 alone, according to the National Anti-Scam Centre's Targeting Scams Report.
The network is also not the first Israel-linked ring to surface with this footprint. A March 2025 investigation by OCCRP, Swedish broadcaster SVT and The Guardian uncovered a boiler room operation controlled from Israel and running out of offices in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Spain and Cyprus, which took in more than $247 million from thousands of victims.
