The former girlfriend of the Turkish businessman accused of carrying out the biggest fraud in the country’s history after escaping with USD 2 billion in crypto currency says she had no idea he had control over so much money nor that he would ever be accused of stealing.

Eslem Sena Nur, who is an Instagram model with 20,000 followers, said that they were together briefly but she had dumped him because he was far too jealous, and she had never realised that he was the head of such a big company or that he could be guilty of stealing.

Faruk Fatih Ozer, 28, the founder and chairman of the board of Turkish crypto money exchange company Thodex, left the country from Istanbul Airport at 6 pm on 20th April.

It has now been revealed that he fled to Albania and after his withdrawal of all of its assets his company Thodex, which had a monthly transaction volume of USD 12 billion (GBP 8,6 billion) with 400,000 active account holders.

The fraud was carefully planned with a lucrative offer for investors to switch the crypto current accounts over to Thodex to boost volume and then gaining five days in which to liquidate the assets and flee by claiming that a new investor had been found on the site was going down for five days to restructure and organise the merger.

However, in the investigation launched upon the filing of criminal complaints to the Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor upon the panic of those who could not reach their accounts, it was learned that Faruk had fled abroad with USD 2 billion (GBP 1.4 billion) from his account holders.

According to Hurriyet’s report, the General Directorate of Security also set up four teams of five people for cooperation and coordination in a bid to track him down. These teams were sent to Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo and North Macedonia.

At the same time, 69 people, including Fatih’s brother Guven Ozer, and sister Serap Ozer, ages not disclosed, were detained in coordinated operations carried out in nine different provinces.

Eslem Sena Nur who appears to have been his most recent girlfriend and was also interviewed said that she left Fatih last year because of his jealousy, and that she did not reunite with him despite him continuing to chase her because he was too possessive.

She said: “Fatih was a brilliant and very reliable person. I was very surprised when I heard that he did such a thing. He didn’t tell me anything about cryptocurrency. I knew that he had a software company. He also said that he had a company abroad. I remember that it was in Singapore. He was such a good man that I’m still in shock.”

Turkish Minister of Interior, Suleyman Soylu, who spoke to the Albanian Interior Minister Bled Cuci for the extradite of Fatih to Turkey, also stated that TRY 31 million (GBP 2,7 million), which was kept in three banks in the name of Fatih, was confiscated.