"It's good to be good at taking responsibility for yourself, whoever tells you to make a lot of mistakes."
Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder of the Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex, his sister Serap Özer and his brother Güven Özer were not only sentenced to 11,196 years, 10 months and 15 days in prison but were also given a judicial fine of $5 million.
Before closing its operations in April 2021 and Özer suddenly disappearing, Thodex was one of the largest crypto exchanges in Turkey that had been operating since 2017.
After Özer fled to Albania, more than 400,000 members did not have access to $2 billion in crypto deposits but he was finally arrested in August 2022 shortly after an Interpol red notice was issued against him.
By April 2023, Özer was extradited to Turkey and detained by the police on seven charges, including establishing and managing an organization with the purpose of committing a crime including being a member of an organization.
In addition to fraud using the information system as a tool of banks or credit institutions, he also cheated traders, company executives and cooperative managers and not forgetting the change in the value of assets as a result of crime.
Following Özer's brother, sister and four senior employees were jailed when the case became known while 83 individuals were arrested as part of the investigation, the trial eventually saw 21 defendants facing up to 40,564 years in prison.
Anatolia's 9th Heavy Penal Court not only acquitted 16 of the 21 defendants, but four of the seven were jailed due to lack of evidence, then other defendants were sentenced to different prison terms for various crimes.
It is well known that the collapse of Thodex caused an uproar in Turkey following crypto being used as a hedge against inflation resulting in a drastic drop in the value of the Lira.
