PANews reported on January 31 that according to foreign media reports, the 22nd District Court of Istanbul, Turkey, withdrew the "organized crime" charges against Faruk Fatih Ozer, the founder of Thodex, but maintained his fraud charges and continued to detain him. Ozer was accused of defrauding more than 400,000 users in the 2021 Thodex exchange collapse, involving a total amount of US$2 billion, and was sentenced to 11,196 years in prison in September 2023. His legal team said it would push for further sentence reductions and emphasized that "the judicial process has not yet ended." Thodex was once Turkey's top exchange. It suddenly closed in April 2021, leaving 391,000 users unable to withdraw cash. Ozer fled and was arrested and extradited in Albania in 2022. The court previously found him guilty of money laundering, fraud and other crimes, but the latest ruling found that some of the charges were insufficient.