Already at this stage, I will note that a large part of the evidentiary basis presented by the plaintiff was based - in addition to her testimony - on correspondence conducted via Skype between the plaintiff and the person who introduced himself as "Stephen ColeJones" on behalf of Global (hereinafter: the "Skype correspondence"). In addition to the Skype correspondence, the plaintiff also submitted e-mail correspondence between itself and employees of Global or Stephen Collins, as well as evidence relating to various proceedings, which, according to the plaintiff, took place in the United States by the Securities and Exchange Commission there, both against Shabbat and against a company on its behalf called Banc De Binary (hereinafter: "BDB"), in which it was determined that all the defendants in that proceeding acted illegally in the marketing of binary options and a ruling was held against them. Among other things, a fine of $7.1 million. The plaintiff further referred to the case that was heard in the United States against an Israeli named Lee Elbaz, who was convicted in the United States of fraud, and according to the plaintiff, the circumstances in her case are substantially similar to the circumstances here.
- With regard to the relationship between OFM and Global, as well as between Avisror and "Stephen ColeJones", the plaintiff begins by claiming that Avisror admitted that he did indeed work for Global on the relevant dates; Because he was in contact with her; and that he introduced himself to her as Stephen Collins. However, according to Avisror, he should not be held liable to the plaintiff in any way, inter alia, since he is not the only one who used the name Stephen Collins. According to the plaintiff, Avisror's last claim should be rejected, as to her approach, in the course of the proceeding it became clear that Avisror was the only Collins who acted with her. This is primarily because the defendants refrained from disclosing which parts of the Skype correspondence presented by the plaintiff were carried out by Avisror and which by other "Collins". In addition, from the correspondence, signs emerge linking the same Collins to Avisror. In support of this claim, the plaintiff refers to the fact that in the Skype correspondence, Collins told her that he had purchased a BMW car, similar to Avisror, who admitted that in 2016 he had a car of this type. Subsequently, it was claimed that the same Collins - who is the owner of the BMW - persuaded the plaintiff to make a deposit of $5,000, and alongside this deposit, the employee's ID number, which was 459, was recorded in the transaction file submitted by the defendants (the "CRM" file). It was claimed that all the other transactions in the account were also attributed to employee number 459 - i.e., Avisror. This except: deposits of "bonus" amounts - which are not amounts deposited by the customer and therefore should not be attributed to a specific employee for the purpose of providing a commission to the employee; the first deposit of several hundred dollars that was attributed to employee 267 - an attribution that is consistent with Avisror's testimony that the first deposits were handled by another department; And finally, the last two deposits, which were attributed to employees numbering 835 and 612 after Collins was already out of the picture. With regard to the "ID" number of the employee who made all of her deposits with the plaintiff, it was argued that when Shavisror admitted that he was in contact with the plaintiff - at least with regard to some of the deposits she made - then given that all the deposits were made by the same employee (who bears the same ID), it is only that Avisror is the only employee who acted with the plaintiff and introduced himself as StephenCole Jones. The plaintiff further refers to the dates on which the same Collins talked about his BMW car as "verified dates" in which Avisror was involved. Further to this assumption, the plaintiff argues that additional support for the fact that Avisror was in contact with her and not different employees who presented themselves under the same name, can be found in unique textual signs whose frequency makes them a kind of signature, which appear on those "verified days". Thus, Collins - who is Avisror - referred to the plaintiff by the nickname Hun; Collins referred to himself by the nickname BC; there is an emoji (hug) that appears on verified days; there is a misspelling of the word "people" which is misspelled: "pepole" on certain days; Collins refers six times to the plaintiff's possibility of purchasing a G6 executive jet; and he used the "D" marking as a kind of smiley on 11 verified days and up to 13 times a day. It was further claimed that in any event, the plaintiff was never told that she was talking to a number of people who all presented themselves under the name Collins, but on the contrary - she was told that the same Collins was her personal manager - that is, that this was the same person. In this context, the plaintiff further argues that on the face of it, "Collins" made use of the previous information that was given to him by her. With regard to this, the defendants claim that the information provided by the plaintiff was transferred from one "Collins" to another "Collins" in the "Notes" system, but according to the plaintiff, this argument should not be accepted, since the defendants did not present the same record in the "Notes" system. Moreover, according to the plaintiff, even insofar as there is substance to the defendants' claim that there was room to make use of "stage names", the defendants failed to provide an explanation as to why there is room to assign the same stage name to different representatives, and this is only part of the fraudulent scheme against her. In light of all this, the plaintiff claimed that she was only in contact with Avisror, who introduced himself to her as "Stephen Collins".
- With regard to the defendants' version that the plaintiff contracted with another company and not with Global - it was first argued that this claim has no significance, since in any case the plaintiff's claims against Global are torts. In any case, according to the plaintiff, in the course of the proceeding, it became clear that there was never a third-party company as claimed, but that the plaintiff's entire engagement was with the defendants, including Global. In support of this claim, the plaintiff first refers to the defendants' failure to mention the name of the other alleged company, even though on the face of it, Global has its details, since Global allegedly entered into a commercial relationship with it. In addition, the plaintiff refers to the terms of use agreement between "OFM" and its customers, in which no legal entity appears on behalf of OFM , but only the address of the website and a commercial center that is unknown. Moreover, the plaintiff refers to her statement of deposits in which two of the withdrawal and deposit transactions are with BDB - a Cypriot company of which Shabbat has confirmed that he owns it. It was further claimed that the defendants presented no less than three versions regarding the company with which the plaintiff supposedly contracted - first it was claimed that it was a Cypriot company, then the defendants claimed that they did not know who the company was, and finally - in the framework of Shabbat's cross-examination - it suddenly claimed that it was a company from Belize. Thus, according to the plaintiff, in practice she contracted with Global and not with another company as alleged.
- According to the plaintiff, it was proven that Global is the company with which she contracted, and that the person who was in constant contact with her as an employee of Global and on her behalf - inter alia in the framework of the Skype correspondence - was Avisror, who introduced himself as "Stephen Collins" - the plaintiff detailed the fraudulent representations that were presented to her by Avisror, which led to her enormous investment and significant loss. Among other things, the plaintiff claimed that she had been misrepresented that the company was working from Hong Kong and that its offices were going to move to London; False representations regarding a successful record over the years with previous clients to whom Avisror supposedly obtained substantial profits, including regular monthly repayments of thousands of euros per month; a misrepresentation that Avisror is an economist with financial expertise and has been working at OFM for the past seven years; misrepresentations in which Avisror persuaded the plaintiff to deposit more and more funds in order to reach a minimum balance that would supposedly entitle her to benefits, and at the same time, false representations that the plaintiff's money is protected and a failure to disclose that her account is being depleted; a false representation that OFM has collaborations with leading companies in the world such as Daimler and that the plaintiff is required to deposit large sums of money in order for Collins to purchase contracts related to these companies for her; Misrepresentation regarding Collins' incentives and interests - according to the plaintiff, Collins wrote to her that his clients' profits yield him financial receipts, and at the same time he made a representation that he did not charge the plaintiff commissions (although there is no dispute that the receipt of Global employees is not derived from customers' profits, but rather from the rate of their deposits and the volume of their trading); Misrepresentation regarding the risk in the investment and that it is an investment that is a "pension fund for the plaintiff", that it is the best and safest investment that exists in the market and that the risk is still small in view of the "bonus" amounts that are injected into the plaintiff's account.
- These representations, as detailed, turned out to be misrepresentations - this is when it became clear that this is an Israeli company, which is not subject to regulatory supervision, as opposed to companies operating from Hong Kong and London, which are global financial centers and in which the companies are subject to regulatory supervision; It turned out that Avisror was not trained as an economist and had worked at Global for about three months (rather than seven years) before the beginning of the relationship between him and the plaintiff; It was argued that contrary to the representation that this is a safe investment, which is like "transferring money from pocket to pocket" - in practice it turned out that these were high-risk transactions; Moreover, it became clear that the bonus amounts deposited into the client's account - which were presented as "insurers" of the client's funds - could only be withdrawn to the extent that transactions were completed in a scope that is twenty times the cumulative sum of the actual investments and the bonus, and therefore, this is not in fact a matter of any protection of the plaintiff's funds.
Moreover, with regard to the commissions and Avisror's representation that he is acting only in the interest of the plaintiff and in his loyalty to her - it was claimed that it became clear that Avisror received a commission derived from the scope of the client's deposits and the turnover of transactions in the client's account. In the context of the commissions, it was argued that not only was this a misrepresentation, since commissions were collected, even though the representation was that no commissions were collected, but that the manner in which the employees at Global were compensated created an inherent conflict of interest in their conduct. As for this, it was detailed that the fees to the employees were a primary derivative of the net deposits of the customers, which are the deposits minus the withdrawals made by the customer. It was argued that this mechanism creates an incentive for the employee to make the customer deposit as much as possible and withdraw as little as possible. Moreover, the employees were compensated for actions performed by the customers, and the higher the turnover, the greater their commission. It is claimed that this latter mechanism led Global's employees to persuade their customers to carry out large-scale transactions. Among other things, the plaintiff refers in this context to the recommendation given to her by Collins to execute counter-transactions - i.e., to enter into PUT and CALL transactions simultaneously - it is claimed that prima facie the probability in these transactions is identical to profit and loss, but in fact the possible loss is greater than the possible profit. This is because when the client correctly predicts that the rate will rise/fall, he will earn an amount that is less than the amount he invested, while if he makes a mistake he will lose the full amount he invested. In these circumstances, it is claimed that in these transactions, regardless of the customer's predictive ability, sooner or later the customer will run out of money. Moreover, it was argued that it was also clear from Shabbat's testimony that increasing the volume of transactions increases the risk of loss. According to the plaintiff, support for this method of remuneration, as well as for the conflict of interest it created, can be found in the affidavit of Avisror himself, who admitted that he was compensated on the basis that the clients would continue to carry out various trading activities and accordingly, encouraged his clients to carry out various trading actions. The plaintiff points out that Avisror's statement is also consistent with the Skype correspondence with him, in which he encouraged her to carry out actions at considerable rates.
- It was argued that the defendants' misrepresentations towards the plaintiff give her grounds for a tort of fraud. This was when the plaintiff was presented with representations of fact that the defendants did not believe in their truthfulness, with the intention of misleading her, and when the plaintiff was actually misled and suffered considerable pecuniary damage as a result. It was claimed that Avisror's liability stemmed from the fact that he was the one who carried out the fraud directly against the plaintiff. It was argued that in addition, Avisror was liable to the plaintiff for the tort of negligent misrepresentation.
As for Global, it was claimed that it employed Avisror and was therefore liable for his actions.