Thodex hack — April 2021
Incident facts
| Date of incident | |
|---|---|
| Publicly disclosed | April 20, 2021 |
| Target type | Centralised exchange |
| Loss | $43,000,000Published estimates range $43,000,000 to $2,000,000,000Price at time of incident |
| Method | Rug pull or exit scamOperator exit scam. The exchange abruptly suspended trading and withdrawals while holding customer deposits, and its founder left the country with control of the customer cryptocurrency held in the platform's own wallets. No external intrusion was alleged. |
| Chains | Multiple chains |
| Attributed to | Faruk Fatih Ozer and his siblings Serap and Guven OzerConfirmed |
| Outcome | Arrests or charges |
What happened
Thodex was one of Turkey's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, processing over $1 billion in daily volume at its peak. On 20 April 2021 it abruptly suspended trading and withdrawals, leaving roughly 391,000 users unable to move their balances. Founder Faruk Fatih Ozer left Turkey and was traced to Albania, taking control of customer cryptocurrency held in the exchange's own wallets.
The size of the loss is genuinely disputed and the widely repeated figure is not the official one. Early press reports, still cited today, put customer funds at around $2 billion. The Istanbul prosecutor's indictment used a far lower number: 356 million Turkish lira of total damage to clients, roughly $43 million at the exchange rate in force when Thodex collapsed. Prosecutors separately alleged Ozer moved more than 250 million lira to accounts he controlled as he fled, some of it ending up at a bank in Malta. Ozer told the court he had emptied a hardware wallet to repay victims and discarded it in the Ionian Sea, a claim that was never substantiated.
Ozer was arrested in Vlore, Albania in August 2022 on an Interpol notice and extradited in April 2023. In September 2023 an Istanbul court convicted him and his siblings Serap and Guven Ozer of fraud, money laundering and forming a criminal organisation, sentencing each to 11,196 years; prosecutors had sought 40,562. In January 2025 the organised-crime charges were set aside and he was granted a partial release. He was found dead in his cell at Tekirdag prison on 1 November 2025. No verified accounting of funds returned to users has been published.
Law enforcement
Turkish authorities issued an Interpol notice; Ozer was arrested in Vlore, Albania in August 2022 and extradited to Turkey in April 2023. An Istanbul court convicted him and his two siblings in September 2023 of fraud, money laundering and forming a criminal organisation and sentenced each to 11,196 years. In January 2025 the organised-crime element was set aside and he was granted a partial release; the fraud case continued. He was found dead in his cell at Tekirdag high-security prison on 1 November 2025.
Sources
- Daily SabahSecondary · retrieved 2026-08-01
- DecryptSecondary · retrieved 2026-08-01
- BBC NewsSecondary · retrieved 2026-08-01
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