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11,196 Years Jail Sentence for Faruk Ozer, CEO of Collapsed Turkish Crypto Exchange Thodex (coindesk.com) 55

Faruk Fatih Ozer, the founder of the collapsed Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, his sister Serap Ozer and his brother Guven Ozer have been sentenced to 11,196 years, 10 months and 15 days in prison, according to local media. A judicial fine of 135 million liras ($5 million approx.) was also imposed. From a report: Thodex was one of Turkey's largest crypto exchanges before it suddenly went offline in April 2021 and Ozer went missing. Over 400,000 members were left in the dark without access to deposits of $2 billion in cryptocurrencies. Ozer had fled to Albania but was arrested in August 2022 after an Interpol red notice against him.

By April 2023, Ozer was extradited to Turkey, and detained by police upon arrival on seven charges, including establishing and managing an organization with the purpose of committing a crime, being a member of an organization, fraud by using information systems as a tool of banks or credit institutions, fraud of merchants or company executives and cooperative managers, and laundering the value of assets resulting from crime.

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11,196 Years Jail Sentence for Faruk Ozer, CEO of Collapsed Turkish Crypto Exchange Thodex

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    criminals love crypto. while some sort of digital currency will come, decentralized crypto will be slowly phased out or have a smaller presence. crypto is immune to market volatility has been proven to be farcical lie.
    • by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Friday September 08, 2023 @10:50AM (#63832458)
      Anyone who needs anonymity loves methods of anonymity. Many of these are criminals, and it will always be so. But anonymity is too important and too valuable to destroy just to get at the criminals.
      • Bitcoin is not the be-all-end-all of anonymity though, nor is it all that anonymous against state actors. The cost/benefit on it is very out of whack so while we can make case to not outright destroy it we shouldn't go out of our way to defend it either.

      • Anyone who needs anonymity loves methods of anonymity. Many of these are criminals, and it will always be so. But anonymity is too important and too valuable to destroy just to get at the criminals.

        You think crypto is anonymous? Bwahahahahahaha!

        I've got some news for you...

        • I love how half the people here don't understand the entire point of bitcoin was being able to trace every transaction.

          • by matmos ( 8363419 )
            Not really, the main point is an unbroken chain of transaction history through a ledger since the creation of the coin which is more than just "tracing" or anonymity.
      • Anyone who needs anonymity loves methods of anonymity. Many of these are criminals, and it will always be so. But anonymity is too important and too valuable to destroy just to get at the criminals.

        Most cryptocurrencies do not provide anonymity since they are non-fungible and traceable.

        You need a truly fungible token (like Monero) to achieve anonymity.

      • Cryptocurrencies are the opposite of anonymous! The blockchain is literally a public record of absolutely ever transaction that ever happened on the chain. In theory, you can create an account without proving your identity. In practice, it's trivially easy to deanonymize transactions if you use a wallet more than twice. Exchanging actual currency for cryptocurrency is also typically impossible without proving your identity as already present money laundering laws make it illegal to do otherwise.

  • by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 ) on Friday September 08, 2023 @10:46AM (#63832436) Homepage

    Those extra 10 months and 15 days though.... That's going to be the hard part.

    • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) on Friday September 08, 2023 @11:17AM (#63832554) Journal
      Naw, with time off for good behavior he'll only end up doing about 9,500 years.
      • Naw, with time off for good behavior he'll only end up doing about 9,500 years.

        And several immortality treatments are just about to go mainstream.

        Sucks to be him.

      • Here in my country, no one can stay in prison more than thirty years (at a time), so I used to think that if someone got a one hundred years sentence, it was pointless. Later, I learned that the time served in prison could be reduced for good behavior, or working or so on, but the reduction was proporcional to the original sentence, so a sentence much longer than thirty years meant that the convict would serve all thirty years.

        Anyway, eleven thousand years seems completely pointless.

      • Naw, with time off for good behavior he'll only end up doing about 9,500 years.

        10 Millennia of Turkish Prison Taffy!

    • Those extra 10 months and 15 days though.... That's going to be the hard part.

      TBH, I'll be really impressed if anyone can accurately count the days between now and then.

      I know the 4-year, 100-year, and 400-year leap year rules. What comes after that? Are years divisible by 2000 leap years or not?

  • it'll be just his luck to die after 11,196 years, 10 months and 14 days

    • Many of the people who retire where I work die shortly after. I suspect a lackadaisical schedule messes with circadian rhythms. (But it feels soooo good to gradually wake up. I hate fucking alarm clocks.)

      Stats do suggest retirement is a health risk. [bbc.com]

      Thus, the change in schedule from being released from jail after bazillion years locked up may throw the body for a loop.

      Maybe that's why Mitch, Joe, Feinstein, etc. keep working despite being wobbly at times. As soon as they retire, fooomp!

      • There's also a pretty high correlation between retirees and being really fucking old. There's also a pretty high correlation between being really fucking old, and being dead.

        Thus, there could be a loose transitive correlation between being retired and dead, no?

        (this is humor, please moderate as such)

        • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          One can statistically isolate the death rate just before retirement versus just after, independent of age.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Shakrai ( 717556 )

        (But it feels soooo good to gradually wake up. I hate fucking alarm clocks.)

        If you have a programmable thermostat, configure it to heat up your house roughly 60 to 90 minutes before you want to wake up, i.e., kill the A/C in summer and crank the heat in winter. May not work for you but when I started doing this it largely negated my alarm clock. I still set it, as a "just in case" but 90+% of the time I wake up without it.

        Another thing, if you wake up early but less than 90 minutes from your desired time, just stay up, even if you don't leave bed (play on your phone, read a book

        • Another thing, if you wake up early but less than 90 minutes from your desired time, just stay up, even if you don't leave bed (play on your phone, read a book, whatever). The average human has a sleep cycle of roughly 90 minutes. Being woken up in the middle of a REM cycle is a pretty shitty experience that will leave you groggy for hours.

          This is sound advice. I always think I'll sleep an extra 15 minutes if I wake up before the alarm clock, but I end up feeling much worse then if I had stayed up.

          That said, it takes will power and self control to do this - both things I lack when waking up.

    • by dbialac ( 320955 )
      We're looking at developing drugs and medical procedures that can allow people to live to 1000. Make him a successful test subject, then a test subject for the one that goes out another 12000 years. And why not do it? If you're sentenced to life, why not make that life sentence a really long sentence.
      • We're looking at developing drugs and medical procedures that can allow people to live to 1000. Make him a successful test subject, then a test subject for the one that goes out another 12000 years. And why not do it? If you're sentenced to life, why not make that life sentence a really long sentence.

        Except the tough on crime crowd doesn't want to spend the money supporting him

        That is the problem with being "tough on crime". The people wanting it don't want to spend guvmint money, so they made it private. The the private companies got money - wait for it - the guvmint.

        Then as all good businesspeeps do, they have to make more profit every quarter, so they come up with more reasons to imprison more people for longer periods of time, getting more money from the guvmint.

        PROFIT!

        And really, there's n

  • if sentences like that were dished out in the US, Switzerland or Luxemburg.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      That would be anti-semitic.

    • Yeah, we have this constitutional clause about cruel and unusual punishment though. You see, some judge somewhere might find that locking up someone until the only way for them to exit their jail cell is in a dust pan on on a gust of wind might find that to be "unusual" in comparison to existing precedents and case law.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Hardly unusual.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • At least the first 5 of your examples from the United States are mass murderers, serial killers, or a serial child rapist.

          Kind of a different class of crime than crypto fraud, so yeah locking someone up for 11,000 years would be unusual in precedent or case law.

          Thanks for proving my point.

          • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            Ah, you've decided to go for more nuanced than "a silly long sentence is cruel and unusual."

            Scroll down to "Larry D. Kiel". 2501 years for

            Kiel sold "a small amount" of cocaine to an undercover policeman. After his arrest, 86 grams of cocaine, 40 grams of marijuana, and $1,800 was seized from his car. Kiel received 1,000 years for drug trafficking, 1,000 for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, 250 years for failure to have a tax stamp on the drugs, 250 years for maintaining a vehicle for illeg

    • I'm guessing the only reason he got this sentence was he scammed money from someone important, i.e. rich. Across the world as long as you stick to bilking little old ladies and working joes you can grift all day long. Nobody cared about Liz Holmes or Madoff until they made fools of the rich.

      If you want to fix stuff like this you can't do it with prison sentences. You need regulations that stop this stuff before it happens. Scams like crypto are inherently high risk, low reward for any country allowing t
  • are they going to freeze him 11,166 years?
  • Go to jail for eternity.

    Steal from the poor, pay a "fine".

    *sigh*

    • Wait, what? We have to pay a fine now?

      When did this get changed, we didn't agree to that! James, call my lawyer, we need to buy a better law.

  • if they exhibit good behavior they'll be out in 5 years on probation. Oh wait, that's only in the US.

    • But he's rich. Shouldn't that reduce the sentence down to 6 months or so at a glorified golf club for fellow billionaires? Maybe a little longer if he wants to complete the end-of-season golf tournament.
  • Then they could have stolen a few hundred million, sent an email and press release saying how sorry they are, and exactly nothing would happen to them.

    Doing a flat out raw in your face theft and fleeing the country was the dumb way to do it. They could all be sitting in private islands right now if they blamed "hackers".

  • See, there's still hope. : )
  • ...he'll be out in half that time.

  • He should be out in 5,598 years and 5 months on good behavior!
  • Then his sentence would have been serious.
  • That's not the kind of sentence a serious judiciary metes out.
    • That's not the kind of sentence a serious judiciary metes out.

      Yes, that's what makes it horrifying. It's not just that the sentence is harsh-- people are sentenced to life without parole all the time. It's the fact that the sentence is worded in a manner that violates common sense. It's the sort of judicial decision you might expect if ChatGPT were in charge; it follows certain logical rules, but there is no mind or soul behind all that rule-following.

      And if the wording of the sentence violates common sense, what other parts of the trial also violated common sense?

      • It's calculated based on the amount stolen, so it's a legal formality that effectively equates to life.

        Also, nobody living in the US or UK should be waving around the phrase "fucked up legal system".

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