Members of the team of the now defunct Turkish crypto exchange Thodex may receive thousands of years in prison, if the court backs the prosecutor’s plea in the case. The trading platform’s CEO has been missing for the past year since Thodex suspended activities in a suspected exit scam.
Turkey seeks up to 40,000 years in prison for the Thodex defendants
A Turkish prosecutor has determined that Faruk Fatih Ozer should be jailed as the founder and chief executive at crypto exchange Thodex.
Hurriyet quoted the indictment shortly after it was made public by Demiroren news agency. They are charged with fraud, establishing a criminal organisation, and laundering proceeds of illicit activities.
Ozer, 28 years old, has gone missing from last year. Interpol still holds a red note for him. This despite the efforts of Turkish police to locate him across several countries. Last footage showing him was taken at Istanbul Airport in January.
Thodex was popularized during the crypto boom, which attracted many Turks who wanted to save their money from high inflation in their fiat currency, The Turkish Lira. It was home to around 400,000 investors and went down abruptly last spring.
Local media reported that Ozer fled Albania in April 2021 with $2 billion. Bloomberg reported that Ozer issued a statement in an undisclosed place in April 2021 in which he promised to repay his customers and to return to the country where he was to be tried.
Indictment from Turkey cites losses in the range of 356 millions lira (24 Million). However, according to an estimate in a Chainalysis report published in January, the figure should be much higher — $2.6 billion. Blockchain forensics claims:
We should note that roughly 90% of the total value lost to rug pulls in 2021 can be attributed to one fraudulent centralized exchange, Thodex, whose CEO disappeared soon after the exchange halted users’ ability to withdraw funds.
After Thodex’s collapse, more than 60 were taken into custody and six others jailed. Turkish authorities opened fraud investigations against the platform and Vebitcoin (another Turkish trading platform), which both ceased operation after Turkey’s central bank banned cryptocurrency payments. Coinzo was another Turkish exchange that ceased crypto trading in October.
Are you positive that Turkey will be able to successfully arrest and indict Thodex’s founder and any of his accomplices? Leave your comments below.
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