FARUK Fatih Ozer, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Thodex, has been slapped with an extremely long jail sentence on charges of money laundering, fraud, and establishing a criminal organization.
Ozer had been missing after the sudden collapse of his company in 2021.
He escaped to Albania, where authorities arrested him last year.
He was deported back to Turkey in June and found guilty of money laundering, fraud, and organized crime.
His two siblings were also found guilty of the same charges.
The Turkish court sentenced the three siblings to 11,196 years each after committing multiple crimes against 2,027 victims.
At the time of his escape, Ozer transferred 250 million lire in user assets in three secret accounts, which left more than 400,000 members of Thodex unable to access more than $2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies.
Prosecutors initially demanded a longer prison sentence for Ozer, amounting to 40,562 years.
Still, the court handed him an 11,000-year jail sentence based on the number of victims they have committed crimes.
Extremely long prison sentences have been common in Turkiye since the government abolished the death penalty in 2004.
