Thodex’s founder Faruk Fatih Özer was arrested in Albania’s Valora province on Aug. 31 and is anticipated to be despatched again to Turkey for trial after preliminary questioning.
Özer is the identify behind the numerous Thodex rug pull that befell in Turkey in 2021. Özer stole over $2 million. Interpol has been searching him for 17 months with a purple discover upon Turkey’s request.
The arrest
A significant Turkish information supply reported that Özer offered a pretend ID to the Albanian police once they confirmed up at his door. Nevertheless, he was instantly taken into custody, and the Albanian forces might establish Özer by means of his face ID and fingerprints.
Albania’s Minister of Inside Affairs, Bledar Çuçi, reached out to his Turkish counterpart, Süleyman Soylu, to inform the nation of Özer’s arrest.
The Albanian forces are nonetheless holding Özer on the time of writing. It’s reported that Turkish Interpol confirmed that it accomplished the required paperwork for Özer’s return and is on the transfer to retrieve him.
In line with Turkish watchdog MASAK’s stories, Özer has three accounts holding over $13 million. Most of his funds are held in a pockets belonging to a crypto alternate in Malta. Turkish forces have been on the lookout for 21 different collaborators, and prosecutors are requesting all of them to be sentenced to jail for a complete of 40,564 years.
A Turkish lawyer accustomed to the Thodex lawsuit commented on the present standing of the case and stated customers could possibly be compensated if the funds Özer allegedly holds might be confirmed to belong to him. Solely then can these funds be confiscated by the authorized authorities and distributed to customers who misplaced their investments.
Thodex rip-off
Thodex launched as a neighborhood alternate in Turkey in 2017 and grew to over 700,000 customers by 2021. It turned the primary Turkish native alternate to increase globally.
In April 2021, withdrawal transactions had been immediately suspended. Authorities from Thodex calmed their customers by saying that the suspension was attributable to a brief scenario throughout the firm.
They knowledgeable the customers that Thodex was going by means of a gross sales course of anticipated to take 5 days and that they might proceed their transactions after it was over. Nevertheless, Özer had fled the nation by the third day and took over $2 million value of crypto with him.
The chart above is taken from Chainalysis‘s 2022 Crypto Crime Report. The $2.6 million stolen was close to twice the scale of the second-largest rug pull of the 12 months.
The severity of the assault motivated Turkish regulators to implement complete crypto regulation. The nation took step one towards making a full-scale regulatory internet in April 2021 and has been engaged on it since.
