Founder of doomed Thodex exchange sentenced to over 11,000 years
Thodex, a Turkish crypto exchange, went belly up in 2021
Valery Evlakhov/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder of failed Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, was sentenced to 11,196 years in prison for fraud, laundering of property values and other crimes.
Özer’s two brothers, who prosecutors claimed worked at Thodex as well, received the same ultra-lengthy prison term.
Özer founded Thodex in 2017 with 400 thousand liras in capital (nearly $15,000), according to the indictment from the prosecutor’s office.
The exchange announced in April 2021 that it would halt transactions for its roughly 400,000 customers for four to five days. Traders never regained access to their crypto, and shortly after the shutdown, Özer fled to Albania.
Özer was captured by authorities in Albania on Aug. 30, 2022, after his customers lost an estimated $2.6 billion due to Thodex’s collapse, per Chainalysis data.
Prosecutors put the amount lost at a much lower 356 million liras (about $13,259,000), according to state run news outlet Anadolu Agency.
Özer didn’t show remorse for the crimes he was convicted of at his sentencing hearing. Rather, he told the court that Thodex was only a company that went bankrupt.
He also said that he was “smart enough” to run any financial institution in the world, adding that he wouldn’t have acted so “amateurishly” if he actually was running a criminal organization.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
- Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
- Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
- 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
- Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
- The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
- Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.
