Founder of a cryptocurrency platform, Faruk Fatih Özer has been sentenced to 11,000 years in prison in Turkey on several charges. A record sentence, of course.
The end of a legal case lasting several years. In 2017, the Koineks cryptocurrency exchange platform is born in Türkiye. On the strength of its success, it becomes Thodex in March 2020, and attracts customers with a lot of advertising and tempting promises. Between March 15 and April 15, 2021, a major campaign is launched, with the gift of 150 Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency supported by Elon Musk, for each new Thodex member.
While customers expect a very strong rise in value of Dogecoin, the Thodex site ceases all activities on April 21, 2021. A message explains that it will resume 5 days later, time to settle a matter with external investors. During this time, Faruk Fatih Özerfounder of the platform, withdraws the assets of almost 400,000 users, or approximately 2 billion dollarsand fled Turkey. It was all a scam.
Founder of cryptocurrency platform Thodex gets 11,000 years in prison
The arrest of the scammer is announced in August 2022. He was found in Albania. Extradited to Turkey last April, he was charged along with 20 other people. Faruk Fatih Özer’s prison sentence is surreal: 11,196 years, 10 months and 15 days. The opinion given by the court specifies that for him, Thodex was set up from the start as a criminal organization with the intention of fraudulently extort money.
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The 9th High Criminal Court of Istanbul convicted the man of “creation, management and membership of an organization”, “qualified fraud” and “real estate asset laundering”. Of the 21 defendants, 16 were acquitted. Turkey is no stranger to this kind of punishment. Adnan Oktar, for example, a guru convicted of several crimes, spent 8,600 years locked up. We are still very far from the record held by the Spanish postman Gabriel March Granadoswho for not having delivered the mail for several years received 384,912 years in prison. Don’t worry, he “only” made 14 in the end.
Source: Le Figaro