September 08, (THEWILL) – Founder of the collapsed Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, Faruk Fatih Ozer, his sister, Serap Ozer and his brother, Guven Ozer, have been sentenced to 11,196 years, 10 months and 15 days in prison.
According to State News Agency, Anadolu, a judicial fine of 135 million liras ($5 million approximately) was also imposed.
Thodex was one of Turkey’s largest crypto exchanges before it suddenly went offline in April 2021 and Özer went missing. Over 400,000 members were left in the dark without access to deposits of $2 billion in cryptocurrencies.
The collapse of Thodex created a stir in Turkey where crypto has been used as a hedge against sky-high inflation and the steep devaluation of the lira.
Ozer had fled to Albania but was arrested in August 2022 after an Interpol red notice against him. He was extradited to Turkey in April 2023, and detained by police upon arrival on seven charges, including establishing and managing an organisation with the purpose of committing a crime, being a member of an organisation, fraud by using information systems as a tool of banks or credit institutions, fraud of merchants or company executives and cooperative managers, and laundering the value of assets resulting from crime.
When the case came to light, Ozer’s brother, sister and four other senior employees were jailed and at least 83 people were detained as part of the investigation. The eventual trial saw 21 defendants facing up to 40,564 years in prison.
The Anatolian 9th Heavy Penal Court announced the verdict on Thursday, acquitting 16 of the 21 defendants and releasing four of the seven jailed due to a lack of evidence.
Other defendants were given varying degrees of imprisonment for various crimes.
