The CEO of a collapsed crypto exchange has reportedly been sentenced to a staggering 11,000 years in prison.
According to a new report Faruk Özer, the CEO of Istanbul-based crypto exchange Thodex, has been sentenced to 11,196 years in prison by Euronews for stealing $2 billion in crypto assets from clients.
Thodex suddenly went offline in April 2021, leaving 400,000 customers without access to their funds, while Özer fled Turkey. He was arrested in Albania in 2022 after Interpol issued a red alert for him.
Interpol’s red message claimed that Özer had intended to defraud his customers from the start and that Thodex was a criminal organization, according to the report.
Özer was found guilty of money laundering, fraud and leading a criminal organization and was sentenced earlier this week. Two of his siblings were also jailed, though no details were given.
It was previously discovered that Özer used the popular meme asset Dogecoin (DOGE) to entice traders into using Thodex by selling it for a quarter of its market price at the time. However, merchants could not withdraw or transfer their DOGE after purchase.
At the time, Thodex issued a statement disputing claims that hundreds of thousands of customers had lost $2 billion in money.
“The allegations that [Thodex] about 391,000 people lost, with a loss of about $2 billion, which was reflected to the public on April 22, 2021, are unfounded.
According to our preliminary findings, only about 30,000 of our nearly 700,000 users have a suspicious condition…”
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Featured image: Shutterstock/Voger Design/Vladimir Sazonov
