Last April, Faruk Fatih Özer had released a statement where he vowed to repay those who lost money and return to Turkey to face the consequences — but he never did.
The fugitive CEO of a collapsed Turkish crypto exchange has been arrested in Albania.
Faruk Fatih Özer was the subject of an Interpol red notice sent to law enforcement agencies around the world — and Turkish prosecutors want to sentence him to 40,000 years in prison.
He was the founder of Thodex, a trading platform that collapsed last year. It's estimated that thousands of customers lost $24 million.
Cryptocurrencies have been especially popular in Turkey as the country grapples with astronomical levels of inflation.
Özer was captured in the city of Vlora at dawn on Tuesday, and work is now underway to extradite him.
Laptops, mobile phones and bank cards were also seized at the time of his arrest.
Last April, Özer had released a statement where he vowed to repay those who lost money and return to Turkey to face the consequences — but he never did.
On a Twitter account that has since been deleted, he claimed Thodex had ceased trading after being targeted in a cyberattack, yet added that all funds were safe.
Back in December, estimates from the blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis indicated that far more than $24 million was lost as a result of Thodex's collapse.
The company projected that over $2 billion was lost in what was the biggest rug pull of the year — representing 90% of the funds lost through this type of scam in 2021.
