Ex-BinaryBook employee Austin Smith pleaded guilty to investment fraud in US court previous week. Ironically, Mr. Smith now runs a company that is supposed to help victims get their money back from binary options scams like BinaryBook.

The United States Department of Justice has filed charges against Smith as a part of the case against Yukom CEO Lee Albaz, who was arrested in September 2017. Smith admitted to defrauding investors while working for Israeli binary options firm Numaris Communications (which cooperated with Yukom) through the websites BigOption and BinaryBook.

While most of the charges against Smith pertain to the period when he worked for the brokerage brands mentioned above, the US Justice Department also accused him of receiving a hefty commission for his recovery services with Wealth Recovery International. More specifically, Smith got a commission of $125,000 from a client he had himself scammed as an employee at BinaryBook. Of course, he did not tell the client that.

After Israeli authorities banned binary options in 2017, many were left looking for work, and some, like Austin Smith, turned to providing money recovery services to victims of binary options frauds. While Smith claims to have left fraudulent activity behind, it seems that he is rather running a secondary scam through his company Wealth Recovery International.

As binary and forex scams have spawned another industry – that of the recovery companies and professionals – we advise investors to be especially wary of any such businesses. The so called “Recovery rooms” usually cold-call victims of investment fraud and offer help in recovering their loss against a certain upfront fee. Of course, all of this only results in additional loss for investors.