Broken virtual currency floor in Turkey: CEO fled with 2 billion USD, 400,000 victims prayed for help

After the Turkish central bank announced a ban on digital payments, the country’s virtual currency exchange was shaken when the CEO disappeared with a net worth of $ 2 billion from investors.

According to the media, hundreds of thousands of Thodex-Turkish cryptocurrency players have turned to the police to investigate CEO Faruk Fatih Ozer when records show that he fled to Thailand through the border gate. no Istanbul at noon on 20/4/2021 with 2 billion USD in virtual currency. The director has closed all communication channels and raised suspicions of an unprecedented large cryptocurrency scam in Turkey.

In fact, the world of virtual money players in this country has begun to worry when the government tightens control of cryptocurrencies, most recently the ban on payment by this means. But things really only broke down when hundreds of thousands of speculators could not access their accounts and the exchange was frozen in session 21/4.

Thodex’s website announced on April 22 that the exchange would be temporarily closed for 4-5 days due to technical problems.

Since 2017, the appearance of the Thodex virtual currency exchange has caught the media’s attention for many signs that this is a sophisticated scam, but investors are still blurred for profit as well as digital money movement around the world.

Regardless, the exchange reassured investors by saying that pre-closing transactions were carried out and that the suspension was meant to complete the transfer of virtual funds to the accounts.

Not accepting this explanation, the Turkish Prosecutor’s Office has entered into an investigation with Thodex on allegations of illegal activities. Even a lawyer Abdullah Usame Ceran has represented clients to sue CEO Ozer for “fraud”.

CoinMarketCap data shows that each session Thodex trading more than 585 million USD in virtual currency. Meanwhile, Anadolo’s report shows that Thodex has around 400,000 cryptocurrency players with 390,000 active traders.

CEO Faruk Fatih Ozer

All for inflation

The story of Turkish people flocking to cryptocurrencies is partly due to the sharp increase in inflation here. In March 2021, Turkey’s inflation rate reached 16% due to the sharp increase in oil prices and the devaluation of the Lira.

As a result, many people pour money into virtual money to keep property prices from inflation. Initially, the government did not prohibit cryptocurrencies, so a series of exchanges mushroomed, but things started to change from the beginning of April 2021 when the Central Bank banned all cash payments. virtual money.

For the Thodex exchange, they quickly attracted a large number of people pouring money here when they announced they would sell about 2 million Dogecoin, a virtual currency that was seen as a joke but quickly rose in price in the market after the claims. pro-billionaire Elon Musk’s father.

Even this trading floor also has drawing and reward activities to encourage people to pour money here.

In the final days before the freeze, Thodex had very shady trades. Data of Coingecko.com shows that the total value of transactions on this floor in the previous week has increased 3 times to more than 1.2 billion USD. Dogecoin is also dumped 30% lower than the global market.