Thodex founder arrested in Albania

Thodex’s laminitis Faruk Fatih Özer was arrested successful Albania’s Valora state connected Aug. 31 and is expected to beryllium sent backmost to Turkey for proceedings aft archetypal questioning.

Özer is the sanction down the important Thodex rug propulsion that took spot successful Turkey successful 2021. Özer stole implicit $2 million. Interpol has been hunting him for 17 months with a reddish announcement upon Turkey’s request.

The arrest

A large Turkish quality root reported that Özer provided a fake ID to the Albanian constabulary erstwhile they showed up astatine his door. However, helium was instantly taken into custody, and the Albanian forces could place Özer done his look ID and fingerprints.

Albania’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Bledar Çuçi, reached retired to his Turkish counterpart, Süleyman Soylu, to notify the state of Özer’s arrest.

The Albanian forces are inactive holding Özer astatine the clip of writing. It is reported that Turkish Interpol confirmed that it completed the indispensable paperwork for Özer’s instrumentality and is connected the determination to retrieve him.

According to Turkish watchdog MASAK’s reports, Özer has 3 accounts holding implicit $13 million. Most of his funds are held successful a wallet belonging to a crypto speech successful Malta. Turkish forces person been looking for 21 different collaborators, and prosecutors are requesting each of them to beryllium sentenced to jailhouse for a full of 40,564 years.

A Turkish lawyer acquainted with the Thodex suit commented connected the existent presumption of the lawsuit and said users could beryllium compensated if the funds Özer allegedly holds tin beryllium proven to beryllium to him. Only past tin these funds beryllium confiscated by the ineligible authorities and distributed to users who mislaid their investments.

Thodex scam

Thodex launched arsenic a section speech successful Turkey successful 2017 and grew to implicit 700,000 users by 2021. It became the archetypal Turkish section speech to grow globally.

In April 2021, withdrawal transactions were abruptly suspended. Authorities from Thodex calmed their users by saying that the suspension was owed to a impermanent concern wrong the company.

They informed the users that Thodex was going done a income process expected to instrumentality 5 days and that they could proceed their transactions aft it was over. However, Özer had fled the state by the 3rd time and took implicit $2 cardinal worthy of crypto with him.

2021 Top 15 rug pulls

The illustration supra is taken from Chainalysis‘s 2022 Crypto Crime Report. The $2.6 cardinal stolen was adjacent doubly the size of the second-largest rug propulsion of the year.

The severity of the onslaught motivated Turkish regulators to instrumentality broad crypto regulation. The state took the first step toward creating a full-scale regulatory nett successful April 2021 and has been moving connected it since.

The station Thodex laminitis arrested successful Albania appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.