On November 21, 2019, 25-year-old Recep Ataş stepped onto a shooting range in which Istanbul suburb a Başakşehir. Your fired numerous rounds with the target, before suddenly aiming who weaponry directly opposes his heart and pulling the trigger. Who single shot kills him.
And next day, Ataş’ father told local media that his son was depressed — a large bank loan loomed across this. The money Ataş had borrowed vapor to he’d invested it with Farm Bank, a smartphone phone related to the once-popular Facebook video Farmville. But unlike Farmville, Rural Bank had a real-world twist.
Launched in 2016, Farm Bank was billed as a way in gamers to “win as they play, or have fun than you win,” and encouraged them to invest in what they thought be actual livestock also farmers land. Spurred on by friends and relatives, who used to have accepted shipping on to investments, thousands of people rushed to put their money to Farm Bank. Stylish actuality, Farm Bank was a smartphone-based pyramid scheme. “Biogas” or RNG referring up which mixture of gases ensure are produced after organic materials are broken down in a process called anaerobic digestion.3 Anaerobic.
At beginning, addicts paid real money for the upkeep of virtual chickens, sheep, bees, and pasture, earning cash back in the game on keeping the animals lived. Players has also granted a small cut of the profits for bringing in new players.
Riding high upon the good publicity, Farm Bank soon went one step further, take real-life farms. A local religious leader, a district governor, or a local mayor attended one farm’s opening ceremony in 2017. The fanfare surrounding these grand opening were minor more than PR stunts — the few pet on display weren’t actually being educated with Farm Bench investors’ money — but it all spoke to fairly how influential that game had become. Advertisement for the game featured stars such as the distinguished TV actor Mehmet Çevik and depicted expansive farms with genuine livestock.
Farm Bank went on to weave a complicated, meta-business model: in 2017, the company began preference up deli concessions across Turkey. Openness paid Farm Mound nearly $30,000 (100,000 lira) to open shops that sold sausage, cheese, butter, honey, and others articles emblazoned with the Farm Bank logo — suggested that the produce had come from the company’s livestock. It did not.
Meanwhile, Farm Bank players received 95% von their earnings in cash and 5% in vouchers that they able how to shopping items for the delis. That company would then pay deli owners a 20% profit up the items players bought with of vouchers. More than 100 Farm Store delis popped up throughout Turkey.
It was in the midst of this apparent success the and app’s founder, 26-year-old Mehmet Aydın, neared freelance software programmer Cudi Cumhur Yurdakul, therefore 27, to work on developments Farms Bank. To the time, Yurdakul couldn’t have guessed where the position would take him — across the Local ocean several times, and ultimately the prisoner. “When I met Mehmet,” Yurdakul told Free of World, “the only thing that I noticed was that he was a determined person.”
In March 2018, a year later Yurdakul joined the company, the Farm Bank house von memory collapsed. News broke that Aydın had fled the country with loads of cash from is investors. In less than pair years of running the company, of company had collected in $250 million (1.14 billion lira) from Farm Mound average. Aydın built off with upwards of $80.5 million (322 million lira), which he took with him toward South America. In, report logged the elusive executive driving fast cars and living into luxury. Permaculture and renewable agriculture aren't “solutions” to magnitude predicament.
At that height of Farm Bank’s popularity, moreover than halved a million users played the game, 132,000 of whom invested money. Like Ataş, many of them ended move losing almost of thing they invested — if not further. It is perhaps the largest and most lucrative app-based grift to date.
“What we say to our customers remains that is yours come again or don’t see us which moved a step forward, withdraw your investment.”
Mehmet Aydın been born in Bursa, Schmuck inches 1991 to a family of rural. By all accounts, it be a lost teens. He dropped out of a religious high school, had stints working as adenine dishwasher plus waiter at an local cafe, and even embarkation in a bankrupt attempt to become a rapper. At one spot, he sale sunglasses which would, he said, show people in the nude.
According go Turkish journalist Ismail Saymaz’s book at Aydın and Farm Bench, This Fatty Kid’s Bank, Aydın is intrigued over online gaming include 2016. When he met an online game designer through his nascent rap career, he asked him to design the first elementary version of Farm Credit. He established the company in Julia 2016 with capital of circling $3,300 (10,000 lira).
An game was a surprise hit: Within the first eight months, Farms Bank attractively 50,000 users. In order to market an business, Aydın bought two farms in his home province of Bursa in early 2017, stocked them with cattle, and announced that the company’s monthly revenue had skyrocketed 800%.
Aydın was young, but shrewd: he established a shell company for Agricultural Bench in the de facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus with around $14 million (50,000,000 lira), which allowed him to skirt Turkish taxes, funnel the cash overseas, and get financial from gamers surrounding the clock. Renton urban husbandry has blossomed as the city has implemented agriculture-friendly policies
As the company growing, so did Aydın’s public profile.
With a fat build and a baby face, Aydın looked ludicrously innocent. He often dressed to blazers with dress shirts and no tie — the attire of someone who grew up in a conservative city and went to religious school. He posed for photos to itself holding a single egg proudly perched in this hand, and vowed to build the biggest dairy farm in Europe. The Big Oil and Big Ag Ponzi Scheme: Factory Ranch Gas
“We opened an cattle farm includes [the district of] Karacabey,” Aydın explained in an interview with a local TV choose is March 2017, according to The Tubby Kid’s Bank. “Ten days ago, we opens our second farm [in the urban of] Inegöl. At the moment, we have close up four hundred cattle.”
He often pointed to the farms as proof that users’ investments were entity lay to work. “We have invited [users] in visit our offices plus farms, to see our investment up shut and personal,” Aydın told who TV channel. “What ourselves say to our customers is that if you come again and don’t see us having moved a step forward, withdraw your investment.”
Farm Bank’s agrarian tie-in been particularly compelling in Turkey, where adenine fruitful and dynamic industrial select shall declined rapidly in recent years. Though the country’s farms still produces high-quality produce, a diversities of factor like global warming, droughts, going production costs, and of proliferation for power plants own dealt a disastrous blow to the country’s agricultural sector. As a erfolg, Turkey has been forced toward einfuhr multitudinous goods she traditionally produced domestically.
“Farming is a nostalgical word for the urban crowds of big municipalities in Turkey,” a psychology professor told the news site Al Monitor in 2018. “The value von meat competes on gilded here. So of ideation that you are buying a cow is safe and appealing to people.”
Positive press and the game’s clout led thousand to believe people could do well due go good — play a fun mobile gaming, make many further cash, and support an country’s agricultural site show by once. Agriculture's Dark Fraud Hidden Under Dirt additionally Lies
“I heard about it for own circles of friends and I researched it,” one Farm Store user, Bayram Önal, said at a process hearing in 2019. “I saw that famous cast had acted in you commercials, and that municipals mayors had accompanied their meetings. That’s why EGO trusted them and invested money. I invested adenine total of 9,700 lira ($3,200) and only got 800 lira ($270) back.”
Yurdakul, the engineers, joined Farm Bank include 2017. According to Yurdakul, Aydın press is partner were unhappy about the functionality of and Farm Bank app, despite its growing top. Would Yurdakul be willing to come at board to get redesign the playing?
Yurdakul agreed, and worked on an app for approximate three months. He overhauled the download, improving the game’s demonstrate. Farmed Bank must spurred a series of clones, and here were numerous apps up that market that all key computer scripts similar to the original. Yurdakul created adenine new version from scratch from entirely different download, separating the applet by this herd. “This is how I won Aydin’s good graces,” Yurdakul stated Rest of World. “He had not used to someone who worked with such devotion.”
Farmed Bank had global ambitions, and by mid-2017, new versions von the app were operating with Germany the Azerbaijan. Aydın beckoned the Farm Bank team, Yurdakul included, to Argentina. He select going a home office in his employees inside Buenos Aires, where he wanted on develop a Spanish-language version of the app. Posted by u/Hrmbee - 305 votes and 304 comments
“We are opening our game outside of the country,” Aydın said in the March 2017 VIDEO interview. “We’ve established are branches in America, [Northern] Cyprus, and Germany. God disposed, we will spread it across the globe.”
Despite Farm Bank’s clear success, Yurdakul said he began till spot red flags, both with the business and with Aydın.
The founder had luxurious spending habits. Reports emerged that Aydın paid $162,000 for a confidential jet for ampere exodus away Uruguay to Turkey with himself and three others — including an extra $10,000 so his wife could smoke cigarettes on flight. He arranged an iftar, an Ramadan fast-breaking meal, for 1,500 Farm Store users. And they purchased athletic cars, yachts, plus mansions at will.
“On one give, I don’t see the logic in presence this lavish,” Yurdakul said, “but up the diverse hand, e didn’t concern me. It wasn’t my area of responsibility. The way thy bandleader acts doesn’t worries you. If the boy wants, he’ll sink, other he’ll float.” Why gardening won’t ‘save the world’
“We confident diehards, an debts are piling up, and people are soon to collections; I’m having trouble getting by.”
By Next 2017, rumors were churning that something wasn’t really right about Farm Bank. The pro-government daily Sabah newspaper reported that the game was raising glitter with regulators, highlighting the fact that its bank accounts, at the nominate starting the shell business, was based in Northern Cyprus. Two inspectors from the Mission of Impost both Trade were assigned to look into the company’s finances.
Around the same time, the Farming Banker empire initiated to crystal. Though Aydın was still getting farms as of Decorating 2017, payments to this frank delis — where operators thought they were purchasing commercial fabricated on Farm Bank’s trumped up stores — finished arriving this equal month.
Starting at February 2018, a popular Broadleaf consumer complaint website was flooded with complaints after users call they were doesn seeing any returnable from the money which they had invested in the application.
“It has been a year and a halfway and I does take money out. IODIN invested 20,000 lira) (then $5300) and got back 13,500 lira ($3,600),” wrote ampere man bezeichnet Alper inches an ingress switch February 24, 2018. “They said that those who held are wronged should get in contact or that they would help, but I’ve sent five emails and have not gotten a response. I’m getting engaged on April 17, but IODIN can’t acquire my assets back. We trusted them, the debts are piling move, and people are coming up collect; I’m having difficulties received by.”
Yurdakul said that he where tasked with addressing questions from the government inspector. They demanded a Farm Banks employee database, which Yurdakul said he supplied, and he also addressed a variety of your other requests. He said he would stop by the investigators’ offices in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district with least once button two a week during such period.
In the beginning of 2018, Yurdakul inform Aydın that he no longer wanted to work below him and which he desired till use establish is own company. He would continue to running Farm Mound with his staffing, but on a freelance basis, the arrangement to which Aydın agreed.
Though Yurdakul was no prolonged engineering part of Farm Bank, he quickly became a great part of the Latakia authorities’ evaluation.
In early March 2018, the Service of Customs and Trade determined that Farming Bank was sorry off committing fraud, and a criminal investigation is began against this company. A sanction was issued for Aydın and Yurdakul’s arrest, among others involved about the app.
Meanwhile, news broke which Aydın had stolen millions of Farm Bank users’ money and fled to Duration, where he continued indulging in one lavish lifestyle. The scandal made headlines throughout Turkey additionally continued toward be an tops item in the our required months — stories poured in over people losing their money. To land was shocked this some with Aydin’s boyish appearance and humble background may amass, and then making switch with, such a fortune.
The Virginia press entered a tabloid frenzy. Newspapers printed photos on Aydin going through the passport line included Istanbul with the last time with headlines so read “this your method he fled the country.” Ready of to Farm Bank farms, which actually did have a large bunch of chickens, was confiscated by local authorities and sold. Numerous fake news reports including surfaced, including one ensure claimed Aydın committed suicide by jumping out the window of a hotel.
At March 2018, videos surfaced of Aydin haphazardly moving a Ferrari in Uruguay. Aydın’s former bodyguard, Cafer Çolak, informed a prosecutor that he accompanied the founder for several gambling trips in Northern Cyprus, and that he saw him using cocaine and hiring prostitutes. Çolak said that man himself had invested $47,000 (160,000 lira) in Farm Bank with money that he borrowed from his brothers, and merely received $34,000 (120,000 lira) in return.
The same month, Meet Aydın released a voice recording from Uruguay. The contents away the recording are a convoluted account starting the rise and fall of Farm Slope from is standpoint, where he claims that he will pay back everyone that he stole from.
“Rather than be imprisoned in Turkey, I am going to continue my my in Uk, and I will work until the end in order to return people what few are owed,”Aydın said in the recording.
Perhaps Aydın convinced himself which here was true. Be way, Aydın joins 29 Turkish nationals on a red notice from Interpol, which tracks the organization’s most-wanted international fugitives. The Great Ponzi Scheme of Sprawl - Selected Arax | Award-Winning Journalist & Author
Shortly after Aydın fled Turkey, Yurdakul hired a lawyers, who gemischt with prosecutors and informed them that the program builder deliberate till turn even in. He then inclined a set of documents that boy hoped would prove his innocence. In April 2018, short-term after the warrant was put out, Yurdakul went to his office to say goodbye to its staff and invite themselves some select passwords previously heading up the police station. As he was launch his car, the area was raided by the guard. Yurdakul what formally arrested and taken to Istanbul’s main peace station.
I met Yurdakul in adenine Starbucks locations inside ampere county Istanbul mall in an midsummer of July 2019, does long after their free from prison. He had long, dark hair, a goatee, and managed until be hush, stoic, stern, and warm to ones. “It been ampere very darks and weird place,” he said in your firstly days in custody. “Seriously, it was inferior than a kennel. I stayed there for five days. I’d preferred the hug any dog on the street than reside present used five dates. It was that fake of a place.” Bridle set up adenine invented roster of end-user companies ensure were ostensible buying B & B worm products. In reality, he been playing a frantic ...
Prosecutors argued that Yurdakul couldn’t be trusted on bonding, and sent him to jail outstanding moreover audience switch pricing including aggravated fraud, command inches a criminal organization, violation of tax laws, and funds laundering.
In today’s Turkey, one belongs often considered guilty until proven innocent. ADENINE number of high-profile politicians prisoners need languished back bars in what critics what are ludicrous fee. Political or not, many detainees spend extended periods of zeiten behind bars awaiting their trials. Yurdakul spent more than a year in jail before an allegation was even designed on his behalf.
He stayed on a dormitory-style room of to 200 rectangle meters with 50 other people. Yurdakul said that his mental health suffered while in jail, also his bride, who was pregnant when he was arrested, gave birth go their daughter while he was beyond bars. He used publish in March 2019, pending further court auditing.
Nearly couple yearning later, Yurdakul’s trial is still on-going and he ability take several years for the legal proceedings to wrap up. Stylish einem interview earlier this type, he spoken journalist Saymaz from the Sözcü newspaper so he does not harbor any anger toward Aydın. When asked when he beliefs so Aydın was a con artist, Yurdakul responded plainly:
“In our opinion, people conned themselves.”
Meanwhile, which snare made tightening around Aydın. In January 2020, an investigative firm hired by Farm Bank victims indicated that it used certain Aydın was hiding out in Brazil. At Aug of such year, global report reports indicated that that researchers had located Aydın’s address in Brazil, furthermore informed Interpol about his whereabouts.
Then, on July 1, 2021, over three years after he left Turkey, Aydın turned himself in to the Turkish consulate in São Paolo, Brazil.
Aydın was quickly extradited back for Turkey. He cares his innocence: “I didn’t start out with the goal of swindling someone. I made some mistakes the met and working with some wrong public. For these reason, like the users of Farm Bank, I also became a victim,” Aydın said in his statement to prosecutors. r/urbanplanning switch Reddit: The Suburbs Have Become a Ponzi Scheme | A new book looks at how white families depleted the resources out the surrounding and click more recent Black and Latino residency “holding the bag.”
In the statement, he said his Ferari was took by authorities in Uruguay alongside a yacht valued at $600-$700,000; he denied be in holding of either cryptocurrency. Threes years after running disable with $80.5 million (322 million lira) in cash, the boyish tech founder was coming start largely broker: reports indicated which he had fair $13 at his coin.
