On January 31st, according to foreign media reports, the 22nd District Court in Istanbul, Turkey, dropped the "organized crime" charges against Thodex founder Faruk Fatih Ozer, but still maintained his fraud charges and continued to detain him. Ozer was accused of defrauding users of ultra-400,000 in the 2021 Thodex exchange crash, involving an amount of 2 billion US dollars, and was sentenced to 11,196 years in prison in September 2023. His legal team said it would push for further reduction of sentence, stressing that "the judicial process is not yet over". Thodex was once a leading exchange in Turkey. The sudden closure of Thodex in April 2021 made 391,000 users unable to withdraw cash. Ozer was arrested and extradited in Albania in 2022 after absconding. The court previously found him guilty of money laundering, fraud and other charges, but the latest ruling found that some of the charges were insufficient evidence.