Law enforcement officers detained the founder of the Thodex exchange Faruk Fatih Ozer

The CEO of the Thodex cryptocurrency exchange, wanted by Turkish authorities on fraud charges, has been detained in Albania.

Faruk Fatih Ozer (Faruk Fatih Özer), who is wanted, was found in the Albanian city of Vlore. The procedure for his extradition to Turkey is currently underway. In 2017, Ozer founded a cryptocurrency trading platform called Koineks Teknoloji. The organization’s tainted reputation forced Ozer to found another marketplace, Thodex, in 2019.

In April 2021, the Turkish police began investigating the new site due to numerous reports of fraud. Exchange users complained about delays in withdrawing funds, and some could not return access to them at all. On April 19, 2021, the platform stopped trading without prior notice to users, and on April 20, Ozer fled Turkey after deleting his social media accounts.

The Thodex founder is accused of embezzling between $2 billion and $10 billion from nearly 400,000 platform users. The Istanbul prosecutor’s office found that Thodex was active in more than 120 countries. Persons involved in the activities of the exchange face life imprisonment. Earlier, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced the blocking of Ozer’s bank deposits in three banks in the amount of 31 million Turkish liras ($1.7 billion).

After the suspect fled the country, photos of Ozer with Suleiman Soylu and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu appeared online. Both ministers said on Twitter that they did not know Ozer. According to them, he went into the office along with other people who were familiar to them.

Between August 2020 and February 2021, about 5,000 BTC were transferred from Thodex wallets to addresses on the Kraken exchange, according to Whitestream.