Lissa Mel pled guilty to her role in $145M fraud; must also pay $288K restitution to her victims; Yukom Comms CEO Lee Elbaz, convicted in same fraud, to be sentenced in Dec.

Axar.az reports citing Timesofisrael that a US federal judge has sentenced Israeli binary options operative Lissa Mel to a one-year prison term for her role in a $145 million fraud scheme carried out by the Israeli-run binary options websites BinaryBook.com and BigOption.com.

In a judgment filed on Thursday, August 29, Mel was sentenced to a prison term of 12 months and a day, to be followed by supervised release for a term of two years. She is also required to pay restitution to victims of $288,024.Lissa Mel, 30, who also goes by the name of Melissa Turdiev, was arrested by the FBI on September 17, 2018, at Los Angeles International Airport as she attempted to board a plane back to Israel.

Mel achieved minor celebrity in Israel in 2008, at the age of 19, when she was a contestant on the first season of the reality TV show, “Hayafa Vehahnun,” the Hebrew-language version of the international franchise “Beauty and the Geek,” in which beautiful young women team up with young men perceived to be smart, yet socially awkward, to compete for cash prizes.