The Anadolu official news agency reported on Friday that a disgraced Turkish crypto pioneer who had fled to Albania and his two brothers have been sentenced to 11,196 years in prison.
According to the prosecution, Thodex CEO Faruk Fatih Ozer, 29, was supposed to serve 40,562 years in jail for fraud, money laundering, and founding a criminal organisation.
Thodex was one of Turkey’s largest crypto exchanges before it suddenly went offline in April 2021 and Özer went missing. More than 400,000 members were left without access to their money: a total of $2 billion in cryptocurrencies.
Anadolu reported that Ozer told the court, “If I were to establish a criminal organisation, I would not have acted so amateurishly.”
Following a quick trial, his two brothers, Serap and Guven, each received the same sentences.
Turkey is known for issuing massive prison sentences, which became more common after it abolished the death penalty in 2004 to help its efforts to join the European Union.
The initial claim that Ozer had left Turkey in April 2021 with $2 billion in investor assets has subsequently been refuted.
Prosecutors said Ozer had transferred 250 million lira in user assets (worth about $30 million at the time) to three secret accounts when he fled Turkey in April 2021, with much of the money ending up in a Malta bank.
The indictment said the Ozer brothers had caused 356 million liras of damage to clients in all.
The case grabbed local headlines because it coincided with a Turkish crypto boom that has since largely subsided due to heavier government regulation.
Turks began turning to various cryptocurrencies as a defence against a deep slide in the value of the lira that began more than two years ago.
Ozer gained further celebrity status after being pictured meeting with ultranationalist pro-government figures.
