Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder of Thodex has been arrested in Istanbul, Turkey exactly two years after the cryptocurrency exchange suspended both deposits and withdrawals on its platform. Notably, his arrest in Turkey follows extradition by Albania’s Ministry of Justice to face the charges levied against him for fraud, money laundering, and running a criminal organization.
Local media house Anadolu Agency reported that the Durres Court of Appeals decided on Faruk’s extradition. Therefore, his flight took off from Tirana, the capital city of Albania, and landed in Turkey this morning.
On arrival in Turkey, he was picked up at the airport by the Police who immediately took him to their station. As part of the arrest process, Faruk will undergo a health check after which he will be taken to the Istanbul Police Department.
Thodex Defrauds 400K Users of $2B
Thodex was one of the biggest global crypto exchanges located in Turkey when it was still functional with about 400,000 user bases. Users of the platform fell for what started as a Dogecoin (DOGE) reward campaign toward Dogeday at the time. Dogeday which is usually celebrated on the 20th of April is a day when the price of DOGE is expected to surge significantly.
Over 2 million tokens of the meme-coin were promised to users who signed up for the reward. About 150 users were enticed by the mouth-watering offer, and ended up registering. The days preceding Dogeday came with several issues for Thodex users who started experiencing difficulties in completing their trades. On escalating to the company, Thodex claimed that the platform was under a cyber attack.
Alas, Dogeday came, and Thodex closed down its trading activities with an assurance that they were going to resume in 4-5 days. However, it was later discovered that the CEO of the company ran away with almost $2 billion in customers deposits. He was therefore declared a fugitive and 81 individuals connected to him, and his firm including his siblings were arrested.
In August, Faruk was spotted and arrested in Vlora, Albania, and his extradition to Turkey was started by the Interpol Department of the General Directorate of Security.
