CFTC v. Cohen (Yukom Communications, rigged binary options execution, 2024)

Settled

Machine-extracted, pending human review. The structured fields on this page were parsed automatically from the regulator's own release, linked below. Read the primary document before relying on any figure here, and tell us if something is wrong.

In 2024, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission entered a consent order against Yakov Cohen for his role in the Yukom Communications binary options scheme (BigOption, BinaryBook, BinaryOnline), alleging conduct this library classifies as rigged binary options execution. Cohen was ordered to disgorge $7 million. He was separately convicted in a parallel criminal case and sentenced to 66 months.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$7m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$7m

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced on September 9, 2024, as release 8962-24, that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois entered a consent order requiring Yakov Cohen to disgorge $7 million in ill-gotten gains from a fraudulent binary options scheme. The order resolves the allegations against Cohen in the CFTC's August 12, 2019 lawsuit (release 7995-19), which also named co-defendants Yossi Herzog, Lee Elbaz, Shalom Peretz, Yukom Communications Ltd., Linkopia Mauritius Ltd., Wirestech Limited d/b/a BigOption, WSB Investments Ltd. d/b/a BinaryBook, and Zolarex Ltd. d/b/a BinaryOnline; the lawsuit remains pending against those co-defendants and this record covers only the order resolved against Cohen.

The order finds that beginning approximately March 26, 2014 through approximately September 2017, Cohen and his co-defendants fraudulently solicited individuals in the United States and elsewhere to trade binary options through websites using the trade names BigOption, BinaryBook and BinaryOnline, falsely representing their interests were aligned with customers' when they actually profited from customers' losses. The order finds the defendants falsely claimed the binary options offered were actual transactions subject to objective market conditions, when they were merely book entries whose outcomes were manipulated by the defendants or others acting at their request, and that approximately 95 percent of customers lost money.

This library tags the matter as rigged binary options execution on the strength of that specific finding: the order does not merely allege misrepresentation about profitability, but that the transaction itself was fabricated and its outcome controlled.

The order also finds the defendants misrepresented their financial expertise, compensation basis, physical location and the identity of employees and agents, and falsely claimed customer funds were held separately when they were commingled with the defendants' own funds and moved through offshore accounts Cohen controlled.

In a parallel criminal matter, Cohen was indicted by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland on the same conduct, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced on August 15 to 66 months in prison and ordered to pay a $7 million criminal penalty; the disgorged funds are to be returned to victims through a Department of Justice victim fund.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Rigged binary options execution — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2019-08-12 CFTC lawsuit filed against Cohen and co-defendants
2. 2024-09-09 Consent order entered against Cohen

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• CFTC release 8962-24

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 29, 2026. submit a correction.