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| Courtesy Cyprus Mail |
Two brothers were given prison sentences of 45,376 and a half years EACH in an Istanbul court yesterday for operating a Ponzi scheme. Be interesting to know how the judge came up with the extra half year in sentencing. Sentence length does make one wonder what the punishment would have been if they’d murdered someone. And no, not execution. The death penalty was outlawed in Türkiye in 2004 and no one had been executed for twenty years before that.
The brothers had set up a company in North Cyprus, which seems to have involved selling virtual animals while persuading buyers they were investing in genuine livestock that would earn a profit. Buyers were defrauded of over 1.6 billion Turkish lira - worth €250 million at the time (2017). No intention of studying the historical currency tables but the current equivalent of €250 million would be about £207,809,144 or $372,004,014 CAD. If long sentences are a deterrent - and there is debate - the fate of the brothers should do it.