Thodex collapsed in April 2021 and never reopened. The Turkish exchange froze trading on 22 April, locking roughly 390,000 users out of their accounts, and founder Faruk Fatih Özer was sentenced to 11,196 years in prison in September 2023. Özer was found dead in a Tekirdağ prison on 1 November 2025.
What Happened on 22 April 2021?
Thodex stopped all trading on the morning of 22 April 2021 and posted a notice saying it needed five days to resolve an outside matter.
The exchange had been founded in Istanbul in 2017 and had grown into one of Turkey’s largest crypto platforms. Once the notice went up, customers could not sell, withdraw or move anything they held on it.
Özer had already left the country. Turkish security officials released a photograph of him passing through passport control at Istanbul airport, and police said he had flown to Albania. An Istanbul prosecutor opened an investigation that same week, police searched the company’s offices, and Turkish authorities arrested 68 people connected to the exchange.
Oğuz Evren Kılıç, a lawyer acting for Thodex customers, said in April 2021 that the remaining assets of about 390,000 active users were irretrievable.
What Triggered the Collapse?
The immediate trigger was a Dogecoin giveaway that pulled in a wave of new sign-ups in the weeks before the exchange went dark.
Between mid-March and mid-April 2021, Thodex promised free Dogecoin to anyone opening a new account. Many of those users later said the coins never arrived, even though the company’s own website stated that millions of them had been distributed.
The campaign landed in a volatile stretch for Turkish crypto. Turkey’s central bank had just barred the use of crypto assets to pay for goods and services, a restriction still in force today.
Özer gave a different account of the failure. In a company statement he blamed a hacking incident from several years earlier, and the firm’s lawyer described the problem as a liquidity shortfall caused by a rush of withdrawal requests. Prosecutors took neither explanation, and charged him with aggravated fraud, money laundering and leading a criminal organization.
Where Did the Missing Bitcoin Go?
Part of it went to Kraken, a United States exchange, months before Thodex shut its doors.
Blockchain analytics firm Whitestream reported that roughly 5,000 bitcoin, worth about $125 million at the time, moved out of wallets it linked to Thodex and into Kraken between August 2020 and February 2021. Whitestream said the coins passed through an intermediate cluster of wallets on the way, and described the pattern as a cash-out operation.
That is an analytics firm’s attribution rather than a court finding, and Kraken’s side of the transfers has never been publicly detailed. It remains the clearest published account of where a large block of customer bitcoin ended up.
How Much Did Thodex Users Actually Lose?
No settled figure has ever been published, and the public estimates differ by more than a hundredfold.
The $2 billion headline that appears in most coverage traces back to early estimates by lawyers for victims, not to the indictment that went before the court.
| Source of estimate | Figure | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Prosecutor’s indictment | 356 million Turkish lira in investor losses | Case filed 2021, verdict 2023 |
| Turkey’s interior minister | About $108 million in company assets | 2021 |
| Chainalysis, cited by Fortune | About $2.6 billion in lost cryptocurrency | September 2023 |
| Oğuz Evren Kılıç, lawyer for users | $2 billion to $10 billion locked in accounts | April 2021 |
The lira figure is the one the court actually ruled on. Dollar conversions of that same 356 million lira published at the time ranged from roughly $13 million to roughly $43 million, depending on which exchange rate a given outlet used. Reporting on Özer’s death in November 2025 put the final indictment’s loss figure at about $24 million.
Loss estimates in crypto fraud cases commonly move by an order of magnitude as investigators trace wallets and separate customer deposits from trading volume. Thodex is an unusually wide example rather than a unique one.
What the Turkish Courts Decided
Albanian police detained Özer in the coastal city of Vlorë on 30 August 2022, acting on an Interpol warrant, and he was extradited to Turkey in April 2023.
The September 2023 Verdict
The Anatolian 9th Heavy Penal Court in Istanbul sentenced Özer to 11,196 years, 10 months and 15 days in prison on 7 September 2023.
His brother Güven Özer and sister Serap Özer received terms of the same length. The court added a fine of 135 million Turkish lira, about $5 million at the time. The convictions covered aggravated fraud, money laundering and leading a criminal organization.
The verdict was not a clean sweep for prosecutors. Sixteen of the 21 defendants were acquitted for insufficient evidence, and four of the seven who had been held in custody were released.
The headline number is a product of Turkish sentencing arithmetic, which stacks a separate term for each count and each victim instead of capping a total. For comparison, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, convicted of fraud over the collapse of his own exchange, was sentenced in the United States to 25 years.
The 2025 Appeal
An appeals court threw out the organized-crime conviction in January 2025 but left the fraud verdict standing.
The Istanbul Regional Court of Justice dropped the charge of founding an organization to commit crime, upheld the fraud and money laundering convictions, and sent parts of the case back to a lower court for retrial, according to reporting published on 31 January 2025. Özer stayed in custody. His legal team said it would keep pressing for leniency, arguing the original term was disproportionate.
How Did Faruk Fatih Özer Die?
Özer was found dead in his cell at a high-security prison in Tekirdağ on 1 November 2025, and Turkish authorities said he died by suicide.
He was 31. Prison staff found him during an inspection of the single-occupancy cell where he had been held since 2023, Turkish outlets reported. His lawyer confirmed the death the same day.
Prosecutors opened an investigation into the circumstances and the body was sent to the forensic medicine institute for an autopsy. No findings from that examination have been made public.
His retrial was still running when he died. Mertcan Bayraktar, a lawyer representing seven Thodex victims, said the death raised serious questions about public confidence in the justice system.
Where the Thodex Case Stands in October 2026
As of 12 October 2026, Thodex is gone, Özer is dead, and the case against the remaining defendants is unresolved.
The exchange never resumed trading after April 2021, and no successor has operated under the name. Prosecutors said proceedings would continue against the other defendants following Özer’s death.
Recovery for customers remains an open process rather than a finished one. Bayraktar said, on the day Özer’s death was reported, that compensation, debt recovery and asset-seizure efforts were still under way. No published figure shows how much, if anything, users have been repaid.
The regulatory ground has shifted underneath the story. Turkey’s Law No. 7518, published in the Official Gazette on 2 July 2024, brought crypto asset service providers under the supervision of the Capital Markets Board, which issued licensing and custody rules on 13 March 2025. Of the hundreds of platforms that once operated in the country, 58 applied for licences and kept trading under the transition arrangements.
No verified public development in the Thodex case has been reported since November 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Thodex Still Operating?
No. Thodex halted trading on 22 April 2021 and never reopened, and no successor exchange has operated under the name.
How Long Was Faruk Fatih Özer’s Sentence?
11,196 years, 10 months and 15 days, handed down on 7 September 2023, plus a fine of 135 million Turkish lira. His brother and sister received the same term.
Did Thodex Customers Get Their Money Back?
No repayment figure has been published. A lawyer for victims said in November 2025 that compensation, debt recovery and asset-seizure processes were still under way.
Was Thodex Hacked or Was It a Fraud?
A Turkish court convicted Özer of aggravated fraud and money laundering. He had blamed an earlier hacking incident, but that account did not survive prosecution.
How Much Money Did Thodex Lose?
Estimates conflict sharply. The indictment put investor losses at 356 million Turkish lira, Turkey’s interior minister cited about $108 million in company assets, and lawyers for users estimated $2 billion to $10 billion.
