SAINT PETERSBURG, Russia — A Russian court on Saturday freed Israeli-Canadian citizen Joshua Cartu who was arrested earlier this week at the request of the United States over alleged financial crimes.
Dubbed the “Ferrari fugitive,” the racing car driver and entrepreneur has been accused, along with his brothers, of defrauding investors of more than $100 million in a binary options trading scheme largely carried out from Israel.
He was detained on Monday by Russia’s Interpol unit at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport after being declared “wanted” by the US.
Saint Petersburg’s Moskovsky District Court ruled to “terminate proceedings” against Cartu, saying Russian authorities had not received an official extradition request.
Russia does not have an extradition treaty with the US, but the countries exchanged prisoners in a major swap last month.
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A court earlier this week kept him in detention because, as an Israeli citizen, he could freely travel out of Russia.
Israeli-Canadian influencer and racecar driver Joshua Cartu (facing camera), who is wanted by US authorities for alleged fraud, leaves a Russian detention center in Saint Petersburg on August 24, 2024. (Olga Maltseva/AFP)
The Saint Petersburg court press service said Cartu was under an Interpol Red Notice due to accusations he was part of a group that defrauded investors in the US of around $60 million between 2013 and 2017.
The US government in 2021 filed a fraud complaint against Cartu and others, including his brothers David and Jonathan, over conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The binary options industry flourished in Israel for a decade before it was outlawed via Knesset legislation in October 2017, largely as a result of investigative reporting by The Times of Israel that began with a March 2016 article entitled “The wolves of Tel Aviv.”
At its height, hundreds of companies in Israel employed thousands of Israelis who allegedly fleeced billions out of victims worldwide. The fraudulent firms would dupe victims into believing that they were successfully investing and earning money, encouraging them to deposit more and more into their accounts, until the company eventually cut off contact with the investor and disappeared with all or almost all of their money.
Israeli prosecutors have yet to indict a single binary options suspect on charges of fraud, while the US has indicted about two dozen, with seven convictions of Israelis, and taken civil enforcement actions against many others.
Cartu’s social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook are followed by hundreds of thousands. They feature glossy images of a luxury lifestyle with race cars.
In interviews with British media, he has described himself as a race car and tech entrepreneur with his own fleet of Ferraris.
Canada’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that it was “aware of an arrest involving a Canadian in Russia” and had offered consular assistance.
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