A Turkish courtroom overturned a earlier verdict that Thodex CEO Faruk Fatih Özer and his two brothers had been responsible of making a legal group. The courtroom overturned responsible verdicts for 16 defendants, however solely 4 of them had been fully acquitted and launched.
Faruk and the Özer brothers had been sentenced to 11,196 years for expenses like aggravated fraud and cash laundering along with this organized crime cost. They may stay in jail, though they demand a retrial.
Faruk Özer’s Thodex Rug Pull
Faruk Fatih Özer based the alternate Thodex together with his brothers Güven and Serap, and so they dedicated one of many largest rug pulls in crypto historical past. Collectively, they reportedly stole round $2 billion in crypto, and Faruk remained at massive after his brothers’ arrest.
Nevertheless, in 2022, he was caught in Albania and later extradited to Turkey.
This monumental theft impacted lots of of 1000’s of customers and broken the trade’s broader fame, so prosecutors tried to throw the e-book at these brothers. They tried to offer Faruk and 20 different Thodex staff sentences of as much as 40,000 years.
These males had been discovered responsible, and the previous CEO was sentenced to 11,196 years. Nevertheless, this sentencing didn’t finish the authorized battle.
In keeping with native media, an attraction launched by Faruk and the opposite Thodex executives has lastly yielded outcomes. The twenty second Legal Chamber of the Istanbul Regional Courtroom of Justice overturned a number of of those convictions.
This week, 16 defendants had been cleared of the aggravated fraud cost, and 4 had been launched outright. The Özer brothers, nonetheless, weren’t so fortunate.
“Overturning the native courtroom’s verdict, the Chamber dominated that the defendants Faruk Fatih Özer, Güven Özer and Serap Özer be launched individually on expenses of creating a legal group. The Chamber dominated that the defendants ought to stay in custody for different crimes and despatched the file again to the native courtroom,” native stories claimed.
In different phrases, Faruk and the top-level Thodex executives are nonetheless on the hook. Nonetheless, the Özer brothers’ authorized group is demanding a retrial, alleging that public notion and media narratives contributed to the lengthy sentence.
For instance, though information stories initially claimed thefts round $2 billion, right now’s indictment asserts that they solely stole $7 million.
“Those that wish to get wealthy in a single day in crypto will get scammed by thodex. They purchase the shares of firms whose value is unknown at inflated costs on the inventory alternate and go bankrupt,” standard Turkish investor Efe Yakup Karahanlı wrote again in 2024.
For now, it’s unclear precisely how lengthy Faruk Özer and the remaining Thodex staff will truly keep in jail. For instance, just a few of the named lesser expenses nonetheless carried sentences of 6-18 years.
There’s a probability that a few of these males could also be launched from jail throughout their lifetime, however even that’s unlikely.
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