Thodex’s founder Faruk Fatih Özer was arrested in Albania’s Valora province on Aug. 31 and is predicted to be despatched again to Turkey for trial after preliminary questioning.
Özer is the identify behind the numerous Thodex rug pull that passed off in Turkey in 2021. Özer stole over $2 million. Interpol has been searching him for 17 months with a pink discover upon Turkey’s request.
The arrest
A serious Turkish information supply reported that Özer offered a pretend ID to the Albanian police after they confirmed up at his door. Nevertheless, he was instantly taken into custody, and the Albanian forces may determine Özer via 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 mandatory paperwork for Özer’s return and is on the transfer to retrieve him.
In response to 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 trade in Malta. Turkish forces have been in search of 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 acquainted with the Thodex lawsuit commented on the present standing of the case and stated customers might 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 an area trade in Turkey in 2017 and grew to over 700,000 customers by 2021. It grew to become the primary Turkish native trade to broaden globally.
In April 2021, withdrawal transactions have been all of a sudden suspended. Authorities from Thodex calmed their customers by saying that the suspension was on account of a short lived scenario inside the firm.
They knowledgeable the customers that Thodex was going via 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 dimensions of the second-largest rug pull of the yr.
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.
