The Thodex Turkish exchange sent $125 million in BTC to Kraken before closing down while blockchain analytics firm Whitestream claimed over 5000 BTC went from the exchange’s controlled wallets via intermediaries so let’s read more in our latest crypto news today.

The Thodex Turkish exchange closed abruptly this month and left customers locked out of their accounts. Whitestream believes that the exchange has been draining off users’ BTC for months. Between 2020 and 2021, about 5000 BTC worth, estimated $125 million at the time of trading, left the wallets owned by now-shuttered Turkish exchange Thodex and landed in Kraken according to the Israel-based blockchain tracking company.

From August 2020 to February 2021, an estimated 5,000 BTC – $125,000,000 were sent from #Thodex Turkish exchange to @krakenfx, In what appears to be #Thodex cash out operation.
Sample transaction: 21cdff1c7611269b1dab8c66ce2714493dd13472aafa8f86d140409e2aa12401 pic.twitter.com/8gBYfiYgFY

— whitestream – Blockchain Intelligence (@whitestream5) April 29, 2021

Whitestream has contracts with the Israeli Defense Ministry and said that it seems to be that Thodexcash out the operation was performed which means that the executives of the exchange were stealing BTC from their customers before laundering it and sending it to Kraken for retrieval. Thodex shut down the operations this month with what a lawyer involved in the case estimated to be up to $2 billion in customer funds inside. Turkey interior Minister Suleyman Soylu downgraded the estimate to about $108 million. The Whitestream CEO and co-founder Itsik Levy pointed out that they weren’t far off the estimated average price.

According to Levy, the cluster of BTC wallet addresses controlled by the same group and in this case the exchange sent BTC via an intermediary cluster of wallets which then sent these to their final destination-Kraken:

“The bottom line is that Kraken received [a] huge amount of Thodex customers’ Bitcoin.”

When asked if there could be another explanation for this, Levy said that if only Thodex operated the entire financial activity through Kraken but that is very unlikely. Turkey detained over 60 people in connection to the Thodex apparent exit scam while seizing computers and freezing the company’s bank accounts. It furthermore jailed another six people in connection to a suspected fraud at the exchange including family members of the exchanges’ CEO who fled to Albania before the exchange announced it had close down. The country even asked for Ozer’s arrest but he claimed that the troubles of the exchange are linked to a cyberattack and not a fraud.

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Source: https://www.dcforecasts.com/bitcoin-news/thodex-turkish-exchange-sent-125m-in-btc-to-kraken-before-closing/