In Turkey, the court has sentenced a fraudster and his two brothers to 11,196 years in prison for being found guilty of defrauding people in a financial business scheme – in the form of cryptocurrency.
The Turkish boss, according to BBC television, had defrauded investors of millions of dollars.
Faruk Fatih Ozer, 29, fled to Albania in 2021 with an investor’s property after his Thodex exchange suddenly collapsed.
He was extradited to Turkey in June and found guilty of money laundering, fraud and organized crime.
Faruk told the court that he “wouldn’t have done strange things” if his intentions were criminal, state media reported.
“I am intelligent enough to lead any institution in the world,” Anadolu Agency quoted him as saying.
“That’s evident in this company I started when I was 22.”
The brief trial in Istanbul also found his sister Serap and brother Guven guilty of the same charges.
Turkish news agencies said the defendants were sentenced separately for multiple crimes against 2,027 victims, resulting in a total of years in the sentence.
Such strange sentences are common in Turkey since the abolition of the death penalty in 2004.
It will also be remembered that in 2022, Adnan Oktar, a TV cult preacher, was imprisoned for 8,658 years for fraud and sex crimes. Ten of his followers received the same sentence.
Prosecutors had asked for Ozer to be sentenced to 40,562 years in prison, AFP reported.
Turks began using cryptocurrencies as a hedge against the devaluation of the lira that began more than two years ago.
Thodex was founded in 2017 and became one of the largest virtual currency exchanges in the country.
Ozer gained national fame as a financial guru and insinuated himself into his establishment by befriending prominent pro-government figures.
However, the system crashed in April 2021. Investors’ funds disappeared and Ozer went into hiding.
He was arrested last year in Albania on an international warrant from Interpol and returned to the country after a long legal process.
Turkish media previously reported that Ozer escaped with assets worth $2bn (£1.6bn). Equivalent to 292B 500M Kenyan shillings.
