Faruk Fatih Özer, the former CEO of Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex, was sentenced by a Turkish court to 11,196 years in prison for “establishing, managing and becoming a member of an organization”, “qualifying fraud”, and “laundering property value”.
The Ninth High Criminal Court of Anatolia sentenced Ozer and his two siblings to the same prison term of 11,000 196 years, 10 months and 15 days and fined $5 million, report Anadolu Agency, Türkiye’s state-run news agency.
The Turkish cryptocurrency exchange was one of the country’s largest digital asset trading platforms before its sudden collapse in 2021. The exchange abruptly stopped the platform’s services without prior notice, and founder Özer fled the country along with users’ assets totaling $2 billion in cryptocurrencies. At the time Ozer dismissed all notions of an exit scam.
The fugitive founder was eventually detained in Albania in August 2022, serving time in prison before being extradited to Turkey in April 2023 on fraud and money laundering charges. Ozer has been in jail since July for failing to file tax documents, and his most recent conviction was for defrauding clients.
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The founder of a cryptocurrency exchange has claimed in court that he and his family faced injustice. He said Thodex was just a bankrupt cryptocurrency company with no criminal intent. A Google-translated version of Ozer’s court statement reads:
“I’m smart enough to run all the institutions in the world. It’s evident from the company I started at 22. If I were to start a criminal organization, I wouldn’t act like an amateur. The problem is it’s clearly on file The suspect has been a victim for more than two years.”
The protracted case against the Thodex cryptocurrency exchange has 21 defendants, five of whom attended court hearings in person. The court acquitted 16 “qualified fraud” defendants due to insufficient evidence and ordered the release of four defendants. The other defendants in this case received different degrees of punishment according to their involvement in the fraud.
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