Faruk Fatih Özer, founder and CEO of the Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, was sentenced in September 2023 to 11,196 years in prison in one of Turkey’s most extreme fraud cases. The sentence came after Thodex abruptly stopped withdrawals in April 2021, leaving users unable to access funds and prompting allegations that Özer fled Turkey with investors’ assets; prosecutors accused him of crimes including leading a criminal organization, aggravated fraud, and money laundering. Thodex had become one of Turkey’s largest crypto exchanges during a period of high inflation and heavy retail crypto adoption, which gave the collapse outsized public impact. Reported losses varied widely, from about $24 million in the final indictment to earlier estimates of as much as $2 billion, underscoring how difficult it was to pin down the full scale of the damage. The case also mattered because it became a symbol of the risks in lightly regulated crypto markets and, after Özer was later reported dead in prison in 2025, it raised further questions about accountability and the handling of one of Turkey’s most notorious crypto scandals.

AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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