Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder and chief executive officer of the collapsed Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex, was found dead in his prison cell on Friday, according to Turkish media.
Authorities said Özer, 30, was discovered hanging in his room at the Tekirdağ F-Type High Security Prison in northwestern Turkey. Prosecutors have opened an investigation into his death. Official sources have not yet confirmed whether it was suicide or if foul play is suspected.
Özer had been serving one of the longest prison sentences ever handed down in Turkey. In September 2023, a court in İstanbul sentenced him to 11,196 years in prison for fraud, money laundering and leading a criminal organization. The court also fined him 135 million Turkish lira, equivalent to several million dollars.
Thodex was one of Turkey’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges during the country’s digital currency boom. It was founded by Özer in 2017, when Turkey’s inflation-stricken economy drove many citizens to invest in crypto assets to protect their savings.
In April 2021 the platform abruptly stopped allowing users to withdraw their money. Özer claimed that Thodex had been targeted by a cyberattack and said the suspension was temporary. Instead, he boarded a flight from İstanbul to Albania and disappeared, leaving hundreds of thousands of investors unable to access their funds.
Turkish prosecutors later accused him of fleeing with about $2 billion in investors’ assets, though the total losses were never officially confirmed. The sudden collapse of Thodex made global headlines and triggered a debate about the dangers of unregulated crypto markets in Turkey.
At Turkey’s request INTERPOL issued a Red Notice for Özer shortly after his disappearance. He was arrested in August 2022 in the coastal town of Himarë, Albania, after more than a year on the run. Following a lengthy extradition process, he was returned to Turkey in April 2023 and detained upon arrival at İstanbul Airport.
At his trial prosecutors demanded over 40,000 years in prison, stacking multiple charges for each affected investor. The court convicted him on three main charges — forming and leading a criminal organization, aggravated fraud and money laundering — and sentenced him to more than 11,000 years. His brother and sister received identical sentences.