$129 million Turkish Farmville-clone scammer found in Uruguay

The owner of a Turkish smartphone game that encouraged users to invest money into a ponzi scheme with the promise of quick, lucrative profits has disappeared with some of the money to Uruguay.

Mehmet Aydın, aged 27, had launched Farm Bank (Çiftlik Bank) at the end of 2016 with the promise of 50,000 lira ($13,000) profit a month for users investing 200,000 lira into the scheme, which he said would be invested in creating Turkey’s biggest dairy farm, secularist newspaper Sözcü said .

The form of the investment was an addictive smartphone game, which allowed bored users to pay to buy and level up virtual chickens, cows and goats that then paid users money over time spent playing the game.

Aydın even set up some initial show-farms around the country and produced introductory videos for the giant facility he had promised to set up.

In total, the project raised 500 million liras ($129 million) and paid out 393 million to investors before Aydın sold his shares in the enterprise and disappeared in December 2017.

Much of the remainder of the money had been wired to northern Cyprus, the media later discovered .

Just before his disappearance, Aydın told the press that he was being threatened from overseas for his contribution to Turkey’s economic success.

“There are certain games being played with our nation,” he said. “We are getting threats from foreign sources, especially London. We are establishing Europe’s biggest facility, and this facility has upset certain groups.”

Investors flocked to the Çiftlik Bank building in Istanbul and farm facilities owned by the group elsewhere in protest on Tuesday after the repayment system in the game was shut down.

An official investigation was launched on charges of deliberate fraud, and it was discovered on Wednesday that Aydın had moved to Montevideo in Uruguay.