Originally published 2021-04-26.
Thodex was a Turkish cryptocurrency exchange that froze without warning in April 2021, locking roughly 390,000 users out of their accounts. Its founder, Faruk Fatih Özer, had flown to Albania. Turkey issued arrest warrants, Interpol published a Red Notice, and police detained 62 people in a single day of raids. Özer was caught in Albania in August 2022, extradited in 2023, sentenced to 11,196 years in prison, and found dead in his cell in November 2025.
Here is what happened, why the early figure of $2 billion was misleading, and what the case teaches anyone who keeps money on a crypto platform.
From Koineks to Thodex
The company began in 2017 under the name Koineks and rebranded as Thodex in March 2020. It grew fast during the crypto boom, helped by advertising campaigns featuring well-known Turkish celebrities. For many ordinary Turks, worried about inflation and a weakening lira, buying cryptocurrency through a local, Turkish-language app felt like an accessible way to protect savings.
An exchange like Thodex is a marketplace: customers deposit lira or coins, trade with each other, and leave balances sitting in accounts the company controls. That last point matters. On most centralised exchanges, the customer does not hold the private keys to the coins. The platform does.
How the collapse unfolded in April 2021
Trading on Thodex stopped on 20 April 2021. The company posted a notice saying it needed a few days to arrange an investment from unnamed banks and funds. By the next day users could not get into their accounts at all, and many realised the founder had left the country.
Events then moved quickly:
- 22 April: Prosecutors in Istanbul opened an investigation.
- 23 April: Police carried out raids across eight provinces. According to the state news agency Anadolu, 62 people were detained out of 78 suspects named in warrants. Özer's assets were frozen, and Turkish authorities circulated an image of him at the airport. Interpol issued a Red Notice the same day.
- Following days: Özer, speaking from abroad, denied the accusations and said he intended to return to Turkey to clear his name.
The timing added to the alarm. Only days earlier, Turkey's central bank had announced a ban on using cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services, citing the risk of "irreparable" losses for users.
Was it really $2 billion?
Early reports repeated a figure of about $2 billion. That number circulated in Turkish media in the first chaotic days and appears to have reflected the value of all trading activity and balances, not a confirmed loss.
When the case reached court, Turkish authorities accused Özer of defrauding nearly 400,000 users of around $150 million. That is still a very large sum for the people involved, many of whom lost savings, but it is a fraction of the headline number. The gap is a good reminder that early estimates during a platform failure are often guesses, and that daily trading volume (Thodex handled hundreds of millions of dollars a day) is not the same as money held.
Arrest, trial and death
Özer stayed out of reach for more than a year. Albanian police arrested him in the Vlorë region in August 2022, and Turkey announced the capture on 30 August. He was extradited to Turkey in April 2023 and held in pre-trial detention.
Twenty-one defendants were indicted. On 7 September 2023 a Turkish court convicted Özer of founding a criminal organisation, aggravated fraud and money laundering, and sentenced him to 11,196 years in prison. His brother and sister received the same sentence. The extraordinary length comes from adding up separate penalties for many counts and victims. Özer denied running a criminal organisation and argued that Thodex was a legitimate business that collapsed under financial pressure.
On 1 November 2025 officials confirmed that the 31-year-old had been found dead in his cell at the high-security prison in Tekirdağ, where he had been held alone. Authorities said he had taken his own life, and prosecutors opened an investigation. At the time, his conviction was still under review by an appeals court and a retrial was under way.
Thodex compared with Mt. Gox and Coincheck
Thodex was not the first exchange disaster, but its nature was different from two famous earlier cases.
Mt. Gox, 2014
The Tokyo-based exchange, once the largest bitcoin platform in the world, suspended withdrawals in February 2014 and filed for bankruptcy, saying about 850,000 bitcoins were missing, worth roughly $473 million at the time. About 200,000 were later found in an old wallet. Most of the loss was blamed on theft by hackers over a long period. Its chief executive, Mark Karpelès, was acquitted of embezzlement in 2019 but given a suspended sentence for manipulating data to inflate the company's holdings.
Coincheck, 2018
In January 2018 hackers stole about 500 million NEM tokens from the Japanese exchange Coincheck, valued at around $530 million. The company said it would compensate its roughly 260,000 affected customers in yen from its own funds, and it was bought by Monex Group a few months later.
In both Japanese cases outside attackers were blamed. In the Thodex case, prosecutors argued that the people running the platform were responsible, which is why the criminal case focused on fraud rather than computer intrusion.
Lessons for crypto users
Getting money back after an exchange fails is hard. Coins can be moved across borders in minutes, wallets are pseudonymous, and bankruptcy or criminal proceedings can take years. Mt. Gox creditors waited about a decade for repayments to begin.
A few practical habits reduce the risk:
- Know who holds the keys. A balance on an exchange is a promise from the company, not coins in your own wallet. For long-term holdings, many people use a personal hardware or software wallet.
- Check licensing and transparency. Look for exchanges regulated in your country, with published proof-of-reserves or audits, and a track record.
- Treat celebrity adverts with caution. Heavy marketing says nothing about how customer funds are kept.
- Watch for warning signs. Sudden withdrawal limits, vague talk of "maintenance" or new investors, and unusually high rewards are reasons to move money out early.
Turkey tightened its rules after the scandal and in 2024 brought crypto platforms under the supervision of its Capital Markets Board. For the people who lost money in 2021, though, regulation arrived too late, and the Thodex story remains one of the clearest examples of why custody matters.
Sources: Thodex (Wikipedia); Al Jazeera/Reuters, 23 April 2021: Turkey crypto exchange probe, 62 arrested; Hürriyet Daily News, November 2025: Defunct Turkish crypto founder found dead in prison; Mt. Gox (Wikipedia); Coincheck (Wikipedia); BBC News, April 2021.
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