Turkish police arrested 68 people as part of their investigation into a cryptocurrency trading platform after thousands of Turks said they were victims of fraud, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
The Thodex platform, which managed hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies every day, announced just before the ”disappearance” that it would close for four to five days due to a sale process.
Users, however, who could not withdraw their money or access their accounts, expressed concern on Twitter that they may have been duped.
Prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 78 people and 68 have been detained so far in an Istanbul-focused operation but expanding to eight regions, according to Anadolu.
Istanbul police said Thodex’s founder and chief executive, Farouk Fatih Ozer, flew to Tirana on Tuesday.
The Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office announced also, that it has opened an investigation into Thodex due to complaints that the platform led to “great sadness of many citizens”.
The MASAK financial crimes investigation body blocked the company’s accounts and launched an investigation, a MASAK source said.
Thodex stated that negative media coverage is not true and that banks and investment funds – whose names it will mention later – want to invest in the company and have proposed a partnership.
The volume of transactions on Thodex’s platform amounted to 538 billion dollars on the last day it worked, according to Coinmarketcap.
