The founder of the Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex has been sentenced to 11,196 years in prison
ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, the founder of the Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex, Faruk Fatih Özer, along with his sister Serap Özer and brother Güven Özer, has been sentenced to 11,196 years, 10 months, and 15 days in prison. They were also fined 135 million lira (approximately 5 million USD) in judicial penalties.Thodex was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Turkey, but it suddenly went offline in April 2021, and Faruk Fatih Özer went missing, leaving over 400,000 members unable to recover cryptocurrency deposits worth 2 billion USD. Faruk Fatih Özer subsequently fled to Albania but was arrested in August 2022 due to a red notice issued by Interpol.As of April 2023, Özer was extradited back to Turkey and was detained by the police upon arrival due to seven charges, including establishing and managing an organization for criminal purposes, being a member of the organization, using information systems as tools for fraud, fraud against banks or credit institutions, merchants or corporate executives, and cooperative managers, as well as money laundering of the proceeds of crime. Following the exposure of the case, Özer's siblings and four other senior employees were sentenced to prison, and at least 83 people were detained during the investigation. In the final trial, 21 defendants faced a maximum sentence of 40,564 years in prison.
