Cum Sa Poarte Tie Dye

Today I'm going to digress a bit from all things TurnKey related to shine a much needed light on a monster I found lurking in my backyard.

I decided to write this post after being horrified this weekend to discover someone in my family has gone to the dark side, working in the heart of Tel-Aviv's ugliest billion dollar "industry": binary options scams.

If you aren't fully educated about binary option scams, the best source of information I've found is TimesOfIsrael's shocking expose:

An industry turning over hundreds of millions of dollars, employing thousands of people, is cynically cheating naive would-be investors worldwide via a range of corrupt practices. It is doing terrible harm to its victims, and it risks doing the same to Israel's reputation.

—Times of Israel: Israeli's vast, amoral binary options scam exposed

It's a very good read, as are the ongoing follow up articles, especially this one: Binary options: a scam that has to be stopped. Indeed.

TL;DR: binary options are an upgraded Nigerian prince scam. This isn't gambling dressed up as legitimate finance. That would be bad enough. No, this is organized crime. Scammers from Israel pretending to be well-trained financiers from respectable financial centers (e.g., London), soliciting funds for "low-risk investments", funneled into rigged one-way "online trading" platforms that make it easy to transfer money in, but next to impossible to transfer money out. Where winning is the same as losing. After they suck you dry, they just stop taking your calls. These companies make regulated gambling outfits look like social aid.

The TimesOfIsrael articles are insightful not just with regards to binary option scams, but also with regards to weaknesses that are allowing Google search results to be manipulated, and how a new kind of criminal organization is exploiting loopholes in the frameworks of International legal and financial networks to run predatory rackets through the Internet.

After reading the article I think I know how honest Nigerians must feel. This isn't business. It's economic terrorism. A hateful antisemitic fantasy come to life. The ugliest kind of destructive, predatory financial fraud, on a massive scale.

As a fellow Israeli I am deeply ashamed that my country is providing safe harbour to these organized crime syndicates, instead of putting the shameless sociopaths who run them behind bars where they belong.

This industry is a monstrous machine for transforming greed, fear and capital into distilled suffering. Suffering for the hundreds of thousands of deceived victims worldwide. Suffering for the thousands of employees, mostly young and foolish, tempted by easy money to sell their souls, auctioning off their values to the highest bidder.

I worry for my family member. One cannot be an active participant or even quietly complicit in evil without being corrupted by it:

There is no fortress so strong that money cannot take it

—Cicero

Introduction Cum Sa Poarte Tie Dye

Sunlight is the best disinfectant

—Louis Brandeis

Fight disinformation with information. Spread the word. Link, tweet and share articles that expose the scam. Use "binary options" keywords in your links. If enough of us do that that will make sure the articles exposing this fraud are the first thing that comes up when someone runs a search.

This will help rebalance Google's search results which are currently undergoing active manipulation:

Israelis entirely legitimate expertise in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is here being utilized in the sophisticated manipulation of Google's search engine, whereby the companies perpetrating the fraud turn up high on Google searches, the better to attract new clients. This creates a near information blackout, where both potential clients and potential employees have little idea what they’re getting into. So skilled is the industry in manipulating Google, indeed, that anyone trying to research the industry is directed to supposedly informative websites that are often run by corrupt firms and their affiliates.

—Times Of Israel, Binary options: a scam that has to be stopped

At the time of writing I can attest to the sad truth of the above myself. Google is one of my favourite companies, but it's currently failing the would be victims of this scam industry.

Remind Google not to be evil

A grassroots viral campaign to get the word out will do a world of good, but it may not be enough.

We also need to complain loudly to Google. It is profiting off of this "industry" by allowing these companies on its ad network and sponsored search results. Through this complicitness Google risks substantial damage to its brand and "don't be evil" reputation.

For example, the first time I googled for binary options my screen was filled top to bottom with 4 sponsored ads for binary option "trading platforms". These ads dominated the entire screen. I've never seen sponsored ads take up so much of a Google search results page before.

I had to scroll down to see the first organic result, which is a binary options company!

Googling for binary options scam leads to sites affiliated with binary options companies that are supposedly tracking the "bad apples". These sites are wallpapered with ads for "legitimate" binary options companies. A matryoshka doll of deception nested within deception.

How to tell Google what you think

1. Link to articles exposing the scam. Make sure to include "binary options" in the link text.
2. Complain publicly on the Google search product forum.
3. Send Google your private feedback on any search term by clicking on the "Send feedback" link at the bottom of the search results.