On Friday, Faruk Fatih Ozer, a disgraced Turkish crypto founder who escaped to Albania, and his two brothers have been sentenced to 11,196 years in prison each, the Anadolu state news agency reported.
Prosecutors had requested for Thodex boss Faruk Fatih, 29, to be sentenced to 40,562 years in jail for money laundering, fraud, and founding an illegal organization.
If I were to build a criminal organization, I would not have worked so inexperienced, Anadolu cited Ozer as telling the court.
His two brothers, Serap and Guven, obtained the exact punishment, which was given late Thursday after a brief trial, Turkish media reports said.
Turkey is known for giving lengthy jail punishments, which became more common after it repealed the death penalty in 2004 to support its measures to join the European Union.
Ozer was initially reported to have escaped Turkey in April 2021 with $2 billion in investor assets, although that figure has since been disputed.
Prosecutors said Ozer had moved 250 million liras in user assets (worth nearly $30 million at the time) to three private accounts when he fled Turkey in April 2021, with much of the money ending up in a Malta bank.
The accusation said the Ozer brothers had caused 356 million liras of damage to clients in all.
The lawsuit held local headlines because it coincided with a Turkish crypto boom that has since essentially declined due to heavier government regulation.
Turkish started shifting to different cryptocurrencies as a protection against a serious drop in the value of the lira that started more than two years ago.
Ozer acquired another celebrity status after being pictured meeting with ultranationalist pro-government figures.
He was captured last year in Albania on an international arrest warrant from Interpol.
