Thodex Ex-CEO and Founder Faruk Fatih Ozer Arrested in Turkey

Albanian police detained Faruk over the charges of defrauding Thodex investors.
Over $2 billion funds of Thodex users are still resting in exchange accounts.

Turkish officials detained the former Chief Executive Officer of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Thodex after he arrived at Istanbul airport. Faruk Fatih Ozer is detained over the charges of fraud and money laundering.

Earlier on April 23, 2021, Interpol issued a Red Notice against Faruk, and after issuing the notice, Faruk was on the radar of national and international authorities.

The ex-CEO fled to Turkey in 2022, leaving all its investors unable to access their accounts. The international arrest warrant against Faruk was issued after the information that over $2 billion of funds were stuck in Thodex.

On August 30, 2022, Faruk was arrested in Albania, but later he was released on his lawyers’ appeal. This was an Istanbul-based crypto exchange that used attractive advertisement campaigns to lure investors. The exchange promised to distribute luxury cars and to make the campaigns more appealing; it featured Turkish models.

As per the data, It halted its buying and selling services in April 2021 after posting a suspicious message that said it needed five days to deal with an unspecified outside investment.

Summary of Thodex Failure

Data from CoinMarketCap states that the Thodex exchange has a user base of more than 400,000. It also says that over 30,000 users are adversely affected by the misdeed, which has incurred a loss of almost $2 billion.

Charge levels on the six include creating an organization to engage in criminal activity and fraud by using information systems, banks, and credit institutions as a tool. As per reports, Bitcoin accounted for 1.73% of its total volume at the time, more than $10 million.

Earlier on, the special request of the Turkish official police department detained Guven Ozer and Serap Ozer, the brother, and sister of Faruk, the founder of Thodex. The users of this said the company scammed them and blocked access to accounts and money withdrawals.

In a statement of 2021, Chainalysis, a blockchain forensic firm, stated- “We should note that roughly 90% of the total value lost to rug pulls in 2021 can be attributed to one fraudulent centralized exchange, whose CEO disappeared soon after the exchange halted users’ ability to withdraw funds.” They also noted that the loss is estimated at over $2.6 billion.

Disclaimer

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