Wanted CEO of crypto exchange Thodex has been arrested in the Interior Ministry of Albania, Turkey said in a statement,
Farooq Fatih Ozar was the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, a worldwide request for law enforcement around the world to locate and temporarily arrest a person.
He was wanted for his role in the overnight disappearance of Thodex, which left thousands of customers without access to their accounts.
The Turkish government said that the process to extradite Ozar back to Turkey has been initiated by Interpol.
He will face a tough legal battle with local prosecutors allegedly pursuing a prison sentence Thousands of years go by for dormant exchange executives.
thodax debacle
Operational since 2017, Thodex abruptly ceased trading in April 2021Citing an unspecified outward investment, which required a pause of four to five days in trading.
a day later, zer Claimed That the company was forced to stop trading due to cyber attacks, but insisted that customer funds were safe and promised to return the money to investors soon.
On the same day, Turkish police detained 62 people, confiscated the company’s computers and froze its accounts.
By this point, Ozar had already fled to Albania, but the Turkish government was preparing to extradite him. This proved to be less than straightforward, however, as searches continued for months.
But he was eventually found in Volor, a coastal city and the third most populous in Albania. Albania’s interior minister told his Turkish counterpart that his identity was confirmed using biometric results.
In April 2021, it emerged that Theodex Transferred $125 million in bitcoin to US exchange Kraken before it closes. Blockchain tracking firm Whitestream, which conducted the discovery, said it appeared to be a “cash-out operation” in which authorities stole customer funds.
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