Mehmet Aydin (Mehmet Aydin) is the creator of the online farm Farm Bank, with which he drew over a hundred thousand people into a financial pyramid. In total, with the help of this scheme, he received $ 130 million, after which he went on the run. Now he has been extradited to Turkey, where he faces a term of up to 75 thousand years.
Farm Bank
Several Turkish media outlets reported on Aydin’s extradition to his homeland last weekend. Bloomberg reports that he himself surrendered to the authorities of Sao Paulo, where he was hiding from persecution.
According to the Associated Press, prosecutors have requested 75,000 years in prison for the entrepreneur on charges of creating an illegal organization, fraud and money laundering. In total, there are 48 suspects in the Aydin case, who also face long terms.
How did Mehmet Aydin deceive people with the help of Farm Bank?
Before the creation of Farm Bank (the original name is Çiftlik Bank), Aydin wanted to become a rapper and wrote songs under the pseudonym Egoman. After that, he sold glasses on the Internet, which, according to him, allowed him to see other people naked.
One of Aydin’s rap videos
The scammer’s life changed when he released Farm Bank in 2017. It was made on the principle of FarmVille and other games in which users equip their farm and breed virtual animals. However, unlike other titles in this genre, players in Farm Bank had to invest real money in it.
Aydin called the users investors and promised that the invested funds would be used to build “the largest dairy farm in the world” for $185 million. The company was supposed to keep 35 thousand cows, and part of the profit would go to dividends to players in Farm Bank.
However, no one was going to build a farm. The game lasted for about a year, and during this time Turkish users spent over $ 300 million in it. The difference between the investments and the dividends paid amounted to $130 million, which Aydin appropriated for himself. More than 130 thousand people were deceived.
At the end of 2017, the Turkish authorities began to receive multiple complaints from residents who accused the entrepreneur of breaking promises. As a result, Aydin fled the country and was put on the wanted list by Interpol.
After that, the police detained several Farm Bank managers and Aydin’s wife. He himself hid in Uruguay for a long time, after which he moved to Brazil. It was there that he finally decided to surrender to the authorities, because he was afraid for his life because of the increased threats of reprisals from the people he had deceived.
Before his extradition to Turkey, Aydin recorded a video message in which he promised to prove his innocence. According to his lawyer, the entrepreneur did not want to turn Farm Bank into a pyramid scheme.
Çiftlikbank’ın kurucusu Mehmet Aydın, SÖZCÜ’ye konuştu
💬 “Kendi hür irademle en kısa sürede Türk yargısına teslim olacağım” https://t.co/hgEXntj2OR pic.twitter.com/uzMXVDJbmh
— Sözcü (@gazetesozcu) June 30, 2021
Aydin’s video message
The start date of the trial is still unknown. In addition to 48 suspects, there are 3,672 plaintiffs in Aydin’s case — only a small part of the people who invested money in Farm Bank.