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He emptied an entire crypto exchange onto a thumb drive
Faruk Özer just started a 11,196-year prison sentence. Did he almost get away with the biggest heist in Turkey’s history, or was it all just a big misunderstanding?
The report asserted that, in 2017, Özer founded Thodex with the intention of operating it as a crime ring for money laundering and that every employee was a willing part of it—from the top executives down to the call-center workers who were placating customers and the social media managers who lured victims with promotions and sweepstakes. He said that when he learned about the prosecutor’s indictment—that his brother and sister were charged with fraud, that they would stand trial in a month, and that without Özer they would most likely take the blame for Thodex’s fall and spend the rest of their lives in prison—he had a wild idea: If every claimant were paid back, did a crime ever really happen? Earlier this year, the country’s finance minister said the government was working to finalize new regulations on crypto, “to make this field safer and to eliminate possible risks.” So although Özer picked a fight with an authoritarian regime and lost—whether because he believed too fully in the gospel of decentralization, because he was a naive kid, because he was a cynical hustler, or some combination of all three—the flames of economic revolution that he helped fan aren’t going out anytime soon.
Or read this on Wired