Turkey: Court Sentences Crypto Founder, Brothers To 11,196 Years Each (Photos)

Faruk Fatih Ozer, the disgraced Turkish crypto founder who had fled to Albania, along with his two brothers, has been sentenced to an astonishing 11,196 years in prison each, as reported by the Anadolu state news agency on Friday.

Prosecutors had sought a prison sentence of 40,562 years for Thodex founder Faruk Fatih Ozer, who is 29 years old. They charged him with money laundering, fraud, and establishing a criminal organization.

During the trial, Ozer reportedly stated, “If I were to establish a criminal organization, I would not have acted so amateurishly,” as cited by Anadolu.

His two brothers, Serap and Guven, received identical sentences. The verdict was delivered late Thursday after a brief trial, according to Turkish media reports.

Turkey has a history of handing down massive prison sentences, a practice that became more prevalent after the country abolished the death penalty in 2004 in its pursuit of European Union membership.

Initially, it was reported that Ozer had fled Turkey in April 2021, taking with him $2 billion in investor assets. However, this figure has since been contested.

Prosecutors claimed that when he fled Turkey in April 2021, Ozer moved 250 million Turkish liras in user assets (approximately $30 million at that time) to three undisclosed accounts, with a substantial portion of the funds ultimately ending up in a Maltese bank.

The indictment stated that the Ozer brothers had caused 356 million Turkish liras in damages to their clients.

This case gained significant attention in Turkey because it coincided with a crypto boom that has since waned due to increased government regulation. Many Turks turned to various cryptocurrencies as a means of protecting themselves from the lira’s steep decline in value, which had begun over two years prior.