Flee with $2 billion, get 11,196 years in prison — and still not return the money (Thodex)

The Turkish exchange Thodex promised an easy road to cryptocurrency wealth to nearly 400,000 people. When the time came to make good on those promises, its founder chose a different road — to the airport. The story of Thodex is one of the few cases where the collapse of a crypto exchange was followed by a sentence measured in thousands of years of imprisonment, and at the same time one of the starkest examples of how a harsh sentence returns not a single dollar to the victims.

Thodex operated in Turkey from 2017 and, within a few years, built a reputation as one of the most popular local crypto exchanges — the platform advertised aggressively, offered cryptocurrency giveaways to new users, and positioned itself as an accessible entry point into the crypto world for ordinary Turkish savers.

In April 2021, Thodex suddenly blocked the ability to withdraw funds for all users. While customers were trying to figure out what was happening, the founder, Faruk Fatih Özer, had already left the country and fled to Albania. Approximately 390,000 people were harmed, and the total losses are estimated at up to $2 billion.

Özer hid in Albania for more than a year until he was arrested there in August 2022, and in April 2023 he was extradited to Turkey. On September 7, 2023, an Istanbul court found him guilty of fraud, establishing and leading a criminal organization, and money laundering, handing down a sentence that reads as "11,196 years in prison" (more precisely — 11,196 years, 10 months, and 15 days), along with a fine of 135 million Turkish lira.

The real figures for the recovery of funds look grim: by estimates, of the roughly $2.6 billion in losses, victims managed to recover only about $4 million. In November 2025, Özer was found dead in the Turkish prison of Tekirdağ; according to the investigation, it was a suicide.

Published 15 December 2025