Fugitive game fraudster Mehmet Aydın en route to Turkey – Interior Ministry
ahvalnews, 03 July 2021
The fugitive founder of Turkish smartphone game that encouraged users to invest money into a ponzi scheme, defrauding users of millions of dollars will arrive in the country on Saturday evening, the Turkish Interior Ministry said.
Mehmet Aydın, who turned himself in to Brazilian police on Thursday, will arrive in Turkey at 10:30 p.m. local time, Deutsche Welle cited ministry spokesman İsmail Çataklı as saying on Saturday.
Thirty-year-old Aydın launched Farm Bank (Çiftlik Bank) at the end of 2016 with the promise of 50,000 lira (equivalent to $13,000 at the time) profit a month for users investing 200,000 lira into the scheme, which he said would be invested in creating Turkey’s biggest dairy farm.
Turkish officials launched an investigation in March 2018 on charges of Aydın’s company operating a ponzi scheme, which culminated to the seizure of Çiftikbank’s assets and the arrest of a number of its executives.
Aydın, who in 2019 was placed on Interpol’s most-wanted list for stealing some 1.1 billion liras ($193 million) from Turkish users, was initially reported as having fled to Uruguay in 2018.
The Turkish fugitive earlier this week turned himself in to authorities at the Consulate General of Turkey in Sao Paulo.
