Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder and CEO of the now-defunct crypto exchange Thodex, has been sentenced to 11,196 years in prison by a court in Istanbul for crimes including aggravated fraud, money laundering, and organised crime. His sister Serap and brother Guven were also found guilty and received the same jail term.
Thodex was founded in 2017, and found success during a period where Turkey's state currency, the lira, was undergoing rummy meet a period of rapid inflation. Turkish people began to see crypto as an apparently safer option than the fluctuating lira, particularly when it came to savings, and Özer became a financial celebrity of sorts in Turkey. Thodex collapsed in April 2021, with Özer initially claiming investors' money was safe, before he fled.
"I am smart enough to lead any institution on Earth," Özer told the court, as reported by state news organisation Anadolu Agency. "That is evident in this company I established at the age of 22. If this were a criminal organization I wouldn’t have acted so amateurishly."
These long prison sentences have become common joy rummy in Turkey ever since it abolished the death penalty in 2004. Believe it or not, the Özer siblings got off lightly: state prosecutors were out to set an example with this case, and sought a sentence of 40,562 years. On the bright side for Özer, with good behaviour he'll be rummy new app out in five or six thousand.