The founder of the cryptocurrency platform Thodex, Faruk Fatih Özer, has been arrested after more than a year on the run in Albania. The Albanian government has informed Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu that Özer has been arrested in the city of Vlora, the Turkish Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday. Özer is said to have embezzled two billion dollars (2 billion euros) in customer money.
The founder of Thodex has been wanted since April 2021 with an international arrest warrant – krone.at reports. The Turkish Interior Ministry said it had already requested extradition from the Albanian authorities.
Investors lured with models and luxury cars
Istanbul-based Thodex had advertised aggressively to attract investors — Turkish models promised luxury cars, for example. Cryptocurrency Dogecoin offered the platform at a quarter of the price charged by other cryptocurrency exchanges. However, the buyers could not resell them or exchange them for other digital currencies.
In April 2021, the site was then no longer available – a few days earlier, Thodex had published a statement that it would take five days for an “outside investment”. The Turkish authorities published – see above – a photo of Özer, taken during passport control at Istanbul airport. Two days after the flight, he complained on Twitter that the allegations against him were “baseless”. He was on his way to meet investors.
Nearly 400,000 investors cheated their money
According to media reports, Özer has cheated nearly 400,000 investors of their money; so the amount was at least two billion dollars. As of April 2021, 62 people with connections to Thodex have already been arrested. In Turkey, the temptation is great to invest money – supposedly lucrative. The Turkish lira has been losing value for months and inflation is rising. Most recently it was about 80 percent.
Source: Krone
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