Turkish Prosecutors Seek 40K Year Jail Sentence for Missing Crypto Exchange CEO

It has been a year since the infamous incident of Thodex took place in Turkey. Thodex is the cryptocurrency exchange market operating out of Turkey. The CEO of the exchange suddenly folded the operations of the company and ran away with the holdings of the company. The people of Turkey were left penniless and without any options after the incident.

Interpol has issued a red notice for the 21-year-old runaway CEO named Faruk Fatih Ozer. According to the Turkish police surveillance reports, the defaulter was seen arriving at the Turkish airport in April this year. However, the police officials have been unable to locate his whereabouts. The charges against Ozer contain creating a fraudulent organization and money laundering by Turkish officials.

There have been many big financial scandals connected with the cryptocurrency space, and many government officials take the offensive position on cryptocurrency growth on account of making these claims. Thodex started in Turkey at the time when the country was dealing with massive money devaluation on account of western sanctions.

Last year, there were other financial cascading factors like the slowing down of businesses on account of COVID outbreaks. The ban on social interactions and travel restrictions made a bad impact on the stability and growth of several businesses. Under these conditions, the people of Turkey started to line up in front of the local cryptocurrency exchange Thodex, which allowed them to gather some hedge against inflation and gain relief against the constant money devaluation.

Ozer the 21-year-old CEO of the Thodex exchange, reached out to Bloomberg from an undisclosed location last year. He claimed that he is going to return the money to the people and pay his dues. Naturally, most people did not believe his claims. The prosecutors in Turkey have recently asked the courts to issue a 40,000-year sentence for Ozer.

Police Arrested 62 Employees Who were Working at Thodex

In an attempt to recover Ozer, the Turkish police arrested 62 employees who were working at Thodex. The government also detained and sentenced a lot of relatives of Ozer to pressure him to return. However, he is out of the reach of the law to date. Bloomberg quoted the local Turkish media outlet Demiroren News that Thodex suffered from a $24 million loss while Chainalysis postulates this loss to be around $2.6 billion.