Mehmet Aydın, the founder of a Turkish online Ponzi scheme who had been accused of embezzling money from thousands of people, was on Monday sentenced to 45,376 years and six months in prison.
Aydın is accused of defrauding through once-popular “Çiftlik Bank,” or Farm Bank, an online game inspired by FarmVille where participants owned and traded virtual animals and crops.
Participants had to invest real cash, which Aydın claimed at the time he would use to finance Europe’s biggest dairy farm project.
Nicknamed “Tosuncuk,” or chubby boy in Turkish, Aydın was believed to have collected the equivalent of more than $131 million in Turkish lira from over 130,000 people through the scheme.
He fled abroad with some of the money in early 2018 and was at large for more than three years before he turned himself in to authorities in Brazil and was extradited to Türkiye in mid-2021.
The game, founded in 2016, was shut in early 2018. The trial against the defendants began in 2019.
Prosecutors sought over 75,000 years in prison for him and his brother Fatih Aydın on charges including establishing and running an illegal organization, fraud and money laundering.
"I did not intend to defraud anyone; I had no intention of committing fraud," Aydın said at the hearing on Monday.
He claimed that his frozen assets prevented him from compensating the victims, suggesting that interest accrued on the seized funds could cover the damages.
“I did not make any false statements to the plaintiffs. I seek acquittal,” he added.
His brother repeated his previous defense and requested his release. "I am not a member of any organization. Most of the defendants do not know me, and I do not know them. I request acquittal," Fatih Aydın said.
The two were sentenced for "fraud through the use of information systems, banks or credit institutions," "establishing, managing, or being a member of a criminal organization," "money laundering," and "aggravated fraud."
