A Turkish crypto founder who fled to Albania and his two brothers have been sentenced to 11,196 years in jail each, Anadolu Agency (AA) reported late Thursday.
Prosecutors had asked for Thodex boss Faruk Fatih Özer, 29, to be sentenced to 40,562 years in prison for money laundering, fraud and establishing a criminal organization.
The hearing at the Anatolian 9th High Criminal Court in Istanbul on Thursday was attended by five detained defendants, including Özer, some of the complainants and the lawyers of the parties.
“If I were to establish a criminal organization, I would not have acted so amateurishly,” AA quoted Özer as telling the court.
His two brothers, Serap and Güven, received the same sentence, which was issued late Thursday after a brief trial, media reports said.
Özer was initially reported to have fled Türkiye in April 2021 with $2 billion in investor assets, although that figure has since been disputed.
Prosecutors said Özer had transferred over TL 250 million (worth about $30 million at the time) in user assets to three secret accounts when he fled Türkiye in April 2021, with much of the money ending up in a Malta bank.
The indictment said the Özer brothers had caused TL 356 million worth of overall damage to clients.
The case grabbed local headlines because it coincided with a Turkish crypto boom that has since largely subsided due to heavier government regulation. Turks began turning to various cryptocurrencies to safeguard against a decline in the value of the lira that began more than two years ago.
Özer was arrested last year in Albania on an international arrest warrant from Interpol.
