Jack Wygodski (aka Jacques Henri Wygodski), one of the masterminds behind the Rax Media forex scamming network, remains at large after his partner, Avi Itzcovich was reportedly arrested on May 11, 2023. Rax Media and other aliases it’s assumed over the years are behind the notorious fraudulent forex scamming network that include brands like Tradorax, Tradervc, Kayafx, Konto fx, and most recently, Libramarkets.
Jack Wygodski and Avi Itzcovich lured thousands of people in Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, and other European countries to invest in Forex and other financial instruments. In reality, they pocketed the investor funds without investing them, defrauding investors of huge sums which some officials believe exceeds $60M euro.
Rax Media Ltd started Tradorax in 2015, long before the 2017 Israeli parliament ban against the enitre forex and binary options industry, prohibiting them from local and international sale of their products. As if anticipating the crackdown, Tradorax advertised in Israel for employees to relocate to work in its call center in Bulgaria.
In 2018, Rax Media Ltd was renamed Mercure Group Ltd and was sold to Stratorija Selimovic. The boiler room operations of Tradorax and Trader Vc reportedly shut down during the buy-out, partly due to the expose on TraderVC by Britain Independent, and the top managers on their organization – Daniel Cohen, Jonathan Boris Greenfield – disappeared. According to intelligence from the police, Jack Wygodski and his closest subordinates never ceased operations. They continued to grow their network in secret, jetting between numerous locations throughout Europe and avoiding police capture until earlier this year.
On May 11 2023, a joint operation of the Koblenz police and Europol raided dozens of locations in Spain, Bulgaria, North Macedonia Poland, Sweden, and Israel and arrested six individuals reportedly connected to a $30 million fraud scheme carried out by Israeli nationals. One of the locations raided was a call center in Sofia thought to be connected to the fraudulent website network of Tradorax, Tradervc, Kayafx, Kontofx, and Libramarket, controlled by Jack Wygodski and his partner Avi Itzcovich.
According to the Koblenz police, the members captured were between the ages of 32 to 65 and were of German, Bulgarian, Israeli-Romanian, Polish, Danish and Belgian nationalities. The only Israeli arrested was Avi Itzcovich, Jack Wygodski’s partner. He is an Israeli-Romanian, while Wygodski is Israeli-Belgian.
Wygodski and Itzcovich ran a fairly elaborate network, using the Israeli SpotOption platform and PandaTS to host their numerous schemes. They managed to stay in operation by hopping between Options platforms each time they were discovered and changing their domain name, hosting, brand name and managerial staff to suit. Over the years, they’ve moved from Tradorax to Tradervc, then Kayafx, Kontofx, and finally Libramarket. They also transferred contact information between the brands, offering aggrieved customers to switch over and receive better treatment.
Wygodski and Itzcovich relied on social media advertisements and search engine ads to seek out new victims and offer them to invest in their brands, promising them outrageous returns.
Jack Wygodski, as of writing, has not been caught, but the recent operations carried out by the Koblenz authorities and Europol give victims hope. Avi Iztocovich could very well provide information about the whereabouts of his partners and perhaps allow the aggrieved to recover some of their stolen funds, amounting to significantly more than the combined value of the real estate, electronic devices, jewelry, high-end vehicles and $2.4 Million in cash seized during the May 11th raid that led to Avi Itzcovich’s arrest and Jack Wygodzki’s flight from the authorities.
