Last update - 00:00 12/02/2008
Broker Ido Samuel has lost millions of other people's money
By Ido Salomon
The kibbutz couple Sagi and Sigalit Cohen, who lost their NIS 440,000 inheritance in a matter of days thanks to broker Ido Samuel of Broker Tov, is one story.
The kibbutz couple Sagi and Sigalit Cohen, who lost their NIS 440,000 inheritance in a matter of days thanks to broker Ido Samuel of Broker Tov, is one story. Another is hotelier David Fattal, for whom Samuel wiped out NIS 2.5 million in rather less time. But apparently, these two stories are the tip of the iceberg.
"I feel like Dreyfus, without Emile Zola," Samuel told TheMarker TV on Monday. "My biggest mistake is that I have to choose my clients better. Customers are like tehina. However tightly you close the pita, some will spill."
At least four claims have been filed against Samuel in recent years. When settling lawsuits, Samuel made his ex-clients sign nondisclosure agreements. Yet TheMarker found more people who made the mistake of their lives when depositing their portfolios with him.
Broker Tov started in 2003 in Tel Aviv, on the first floor of 30 Yavne Street. Harel Capital Markets, where one Guy Vaisman was CFO and deputy CEO, was on the second story, and employed Broker Tov's marketing.
Capital market sources claim Vaisman and Samuel were close and note that when Vaisman was arrested for massive embezzlement from Harel, all the marketers were tossed out of the building, including Samuel.
"On the contrary," Samuel told TheMarker Monday. "Guy and I never got along. He supported Maccabi Tel Aviv and I support Beitar. We had a real communications breakdown... We'd meet once a year when renewing the contract and that was all."
Harel Capital Markets stated that when Shimon Elkabetz took over as managing director, he decided to handle all marketing in-house, which is how the first floor was vacated. The company added that it knows nothing of any connection between Vaisman and Samuel.
Maybe they barely knew one another but both were bad news for clients. Samuel presented himself as a capital market expert, on a Website and in Internet forums. While his activity seems legitimate, his conduct is odd indeed.
Shahar Atzmon, 32, a software engineer with Intel, is married plus two. In October 2004, he met with Samuel, who presented himself as an investments manager gifted at technical analysis. Samuel presented two money management options: at Broker Tov in a group with other portfolios, or personal management via Harel Capital Markets (Samuel presented himself as its agent).
They agreed on moderate risk, and that the portfolio's returns would be evaluated on a quarterly basis. Inside a week, Samuel had lost NIS 80,000 of Atzmon's NIS 170,000. Days later it was all gone. Atzmon sued, but they settled.
"I returned all the commissions, as he deserved, but he sued anyway. The fact that he sued doesn't mean he's right. I paid him even though I knew he wasn't right," said Samuel.
Demobbed soldier Oded Allberg invested NIS 50,000 and within days, was in the red. The "expert" on the other hand made hay on fees: Samuel drummed up 6,888 transactions in just 12 trading days, at the end of which Allberg owed Harel NIS 34,839 because of the fee on each transaction.
That led Allberg to call Samuel, asking what was going on. Samuel answered by email: "You should be ashamed you idiot. I'll close the overdraft when I have a chance. Do you think that Zeev the thief who works for the Alperons [crime family], or Ronen who's even more of a thief will help you? I'm throwing you out of my portfolio and I don't want to hear from you, you scum."
In another email he wrote, "I cheated you, you idiot, you moron. I'll close your overdraft because I undertook to... Go f**k yourself."
Allberg sued and again it ended in a settlement.
Samuel: "I paid him all the money. He went to people to threaten the people with whom I'm in business, to stop working with me. The story here is much more complicated."
Assaf Baram, the lawyer representing Allberg, claims Harel is not an innocent party in this affair. He believes it knew what was going on under its wing, but ignored it.
"By granting physical shelter, Harel was a full partner to the activity there [at Broker Tov] and worse: it benefited from the fruits, cutting fat coupons from commissions as its price of silence."
In response, Harel said: "The man's work was terminated a year ago and the whole issue doesn't touch the investment firm, only the portfolio manager. The portfolio manager signed the clients on a contract, under which the customer grants his full backing and authority to the financial marketer, and determines that the investment firm is only a platform through which the transaction is carried out." Licensed brokers are supervised by watchdogs, but Samuel wasn't a licensed broker with malpractice insurance. He didn't need a license because he declared his case list was only five private portfolios, so he was exempt. But some legal experts feel that Harel may be liable anyway, because it allowed Samuel to operate on its turf.
"I don't want revenge," says Sagi Cohen, whose story was revealed in Amnon Levy's Channel 10 TV show "Screen saver". "He said to me, 'Get a gun and shoot me.' I would never do a thing like that for money," Cohen continues.
He and his wife lost NIS 440,000 to Samuel's maneuvering during February 2007: by the end of the month all that remained was NIS 2,751. The broker returned NIS 48,000. "The two wanted to invest in the riskiest avenue on the market, options on the TA-25 index," Samuel explains to TheMarker. He claims that the "Screensaver" program was misleading: he hadn't carried out 63,000 transactions in the Cohens' account: that was the turnover in options, he argues.
"I didn't carry out that number of transactions and didn't receive commissions: I bought an amount of options, in one, five or 10 transactions, not 63,000. Any commission I received from managing the portfolio, I gave back to the couple at my own initiative."
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