Crypto scammer behind $4B fraud caught in Istanbul after gaining Turkish citizenship

Duvar English

Andreas Szakacs, the Swiss CEO of the cryptocurrency company OmegaPro, which began operations in 2019, was arrested in Istanbul in July after orchestrating a multi-billion dollar fraud. 

Journalist Timur Soykan from the daily BirGün revealed that Szakacs had obtained Turkish citizenship and adopted the name Emre Avcı.

Szakacs and his team had organized in multiple countries, gained trust by distributing large profits to the first participants, and created a prestigious image through fake newspaper articles and awards. 

For instance, they organized a football tournament in Dubai and Panama under the name of OmegaPro Legends Cup where former footballers Ronaldinho, Kaka, Wesley Sneijder, John Terry, and Iker Casillas took the field.

However, in November 2022, they stopped payments to investors, and in July 2023, they completely shut down the company, ending its operations.

Szakacs was arrested on July 9 in Istanbul’s Beykoz district and arrested a day later. His OmegaPro has been alleged to defraud over three million investors of $4 billion.

A new method for global fraudsters: Earning Turkish citizenship

Despite not speaking Turkish, Szakacs, whose mother is Swedish and father is of Turkish descent, came to Istanbul after the OmegaPro scam, despite all the warrants against him. He settled with his family in a villa in the remote Beykoz district.

Investors from around the world have filed complaints, with over 1,500 complaints in France alone leading to a class action lawsuit. In Nigeria, victims launched a petition on change.org, seeking help from Dubai, where the company is headquartered, claiming there are 10,000 victims. Class action lawsuits have also been filed against the company in countries like Colombia, Mexico, Congo, Portugal, the UK, and Myanmar.

Before the operation, the gendarmerie investigated the victims of OmegaPro and identified 18 complainants from Turkey using an online platform.

During the operation, 32 cold wallets (a device or method for storing cryptocurrency private keys offline) containing cryptocurrencies and several password storage devices were seized. 

On a computer, numerous OmegaPro documents and records of large financial transactions were discovered. The folder also contained records of wallet addresses for various cryptocurrencies. 

In his statement, Szakacs did not accept the accusation that the company defrauded many people and said, “Around 2022 September-October, the company went bankrupt and we suffered the biggest damage. We compensated the damages of many victims until bankruptcy.”

In a preliminary examination of Szakacs's digital devices, $160 million worth of cryptocurrency transactions were detected within just a month. Szakacs refused to provide the passwords for the cold wallets and computers, which were believed to manage main servers.

He stated that he works in finance and marketing with a monthly income of $100,000. Although he claimed to have recently acquired citizenship due to construction investments, he could not recall the locations of these investments.

Szakacs's lawyers argued that there is a risk of losing money in the Forex market, and the complainants were aware of this when they made transactions.

On July 10, the Beykoz Criminal Court of Peace ordered Avcı's arrest on charges of "fraud using information systems, banks, or credit institutions."