A man managed to scam an entire country out of 130 million dollars (about 120 million euros)… and to do so, he only needed a simple farming game.
The game in question was called Farm Bank (Çiftlik Bank in Turkish), an apparently innocent app where you manage your own farm with cows, chickens and goats. However, there was another side to the app that connected users with real-world monetary gains and losses.
Mehmet Aydan, the mastermind behind the farm game, created the game for an audience in Turkey who could use the in-app coins to buy livestock and build their own farm. They can pay for things with real money and earn gold nuggets that they can exchange for real money that they can withdraw – in other words, a Ponzi scheme.
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment activity in which returns paid by new investors generate income for older investors rather than profits from legitimate business activities or financial trading.
The scam was revealed on YouTube, with the application telling its 1.64 million subscribers, “You can invest your money in virtual livestock, and by doing so it automatically invests in real farms. These real animal products are then sold in specialized agricultural stores. At that time, Turkey’s agriculture was facing serious problems and the sport gave people an opportunity to support the country’s agricultural industry.
However, the game is a huge scam and most of the farms Aydn claimed to be using were actually inactive. In 2017, it was reported that about $250 million had been invested in the game by users, but people had trouble getting their money back.
According to YouTuber Fern, who reported the case, “In December 2017, Ayden suddenly sold his shares in the company. A month later, Çiftlik Bank says it stopped accepting new users and stopped paying profits.
In March 2018, authorities reported that the application was fraudulent and a criminal investigation was launched.
But the scandal turned into a global manhunt after Ayden fled to Uruguay with millions of dollars. According to Fern, “he wasn’t exactly calm” and was “seen driving his Ferrari”, but it was only in 2020 that authorities suspected he was lurking in Brazil.
In 2021, he was finally caught in São Paulo, where he was arrested and taken back to Turkey. Aydn, known by the nickname “Tosuncuk”, was detained on a flight at Istanbul Airport on July 3, 2021. As part of the investigation against him following complaints from 102 victims, he was accused of “creating a system”. Crime”, “fraud using information systems, banks or credit institutions as a tool”. He was arrested on charges of defrauding traders or company managers and cooperative managers. Although Aydan left with 80.5 million dollars, he returned to Istanbul with only 13 dollars in his wallet.
Now, in a case involving 20 defendants, the fraudster faces a total of 89,000 years in prison.
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