Faruk Fatih Ozer, once hailed as Turkey’s youngest crypto success story, was found dead this week inside his confinement in a single cell at the Tekirdağ F-type high-security prison, where he was serving an 11,196-year sentence for one of the biggest financial scandals in the country’s history.
Turkish Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç confirmed that The first findings indicate suicide.although a full investigation has been opened.
Ozer’s trajectory reflects the early Wild West arc of cryptocurrencies: rapid innovation, unbridled growth, and catastrophic implosion.
How did Faruk Fatih Ozer end up serving 11,196 years in a Turkish prison?
In 2017, at just 22 years old, he founded Thodex, a cryptocurrency exchange positioned as Turkey’s gateway to global digital assets at a time when the collapse of the Turkish lira was driving savers towards Bitcoin.
Within four years, Thodex had more than 400,000 users and was processing hundreds of millions of dollars in daily volume, fueled by aggressive marketing, celebrity endorsements, and an aura of legitimacy built through Ozer’s public ties to pro-government circles.
That image disintegrated overnight in April 2021, when Thodex withdrawals abruptly stopped and their website went down.
Users soon realized that approximately $2.6 billion in deposits were missing. Chainalysis later identified it as one of the biggest IPO scams of the decade.
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A young man on the run in Albania: Do Kwon Jr?
Within days, Ozer fled Turkey and boarded a flight to Albania as prosecutors issued an Interpol red notice. The young businessman, once portrayed alongside Istanbul’s business elite, became the face of a national betrayal.
For 16 months he evaded capture before being arrested in August 2022 in Vlorë, Albania, after a prolonged manhunt coordinated by Interpol and Turkish intelligence.
He was extradited to Istanbul the following year to stand trial on charges of aggravated fraud, money laundering and leading a criminal organization.
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Ozer’s denial marks 11,196 years in Tekirdağ prison
In September 2023, Ozer, his brother Güven and sister Serap were convicted by an Istanbul court and given sentences of 11,196 years each, a figure derived from separate charges covering 2,027 victims, a convention in Turkey since capital punishment was abolished.
During his trial, Ozer denied his intent to defraud and portrayed himself as a visionary torn apart by regulatory ambiguity.
“If I had criminal intentions, I would not have acted so amateurishly,” he told the court, stating that he planned to refund customers after stabilizing Thodex’s overseas operations.
In earlier statements written after his flight, he admitted to thinking about suicide, but said he chose to “stay alive and fight, work and pay my debts.”
(Fountain – A rare image of Tekirağ Prison)
Tekirdağ Prison, where he spent his final months, has long faced criticism from human rights groups for its isolation practices.
The prison itself is a “Type F” prison that was described in a reportt by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture.
“The three F-type prisons visited in December 2005 housed a small number of prisoners serving an aggravated life sentence. Their only out-of-cell activity, apart from a visit every 15 days and a fortnightly phone call, was exercising outdoors in the yard next to their cell.”
Local media reported Ozer was found hanging in the bathroom of his cell on Saturday morning. Medical teams pronounced him dead at the scene.
For many Turks, Ozer’s death closes a dark chapter in the country’s cryptocurrency boom, a story of youthful ambition consumed by arrogance, regulatory neglect and national economic desperation.
But its disappearance also underscores a broader reality: In an era when financial innovation outpaces oversight, the line between entrepreneur and outlaw can disappear as quickly as a server goes offline.
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The post Who is Faruk Fatih Ozer? The rise and death of the $2.6 billion Turkish crypto prodigy appeared first on 99Bitcoins.
