Ponzi scheme smuggles $7 mln in cash in 17 parcels

ISTANBUL

The members of a Turkish Ponzi scheme, which is believed to have collected 639 million Turkish Liras ($76 million) from some 13,000 people, have confessed to carrying millions in cash with parcels, daily Hürriyet has reported.

According to the report published on Aug. 31, one of the group members said, “We smuggled some 60 million Liras [$7 mln] by hiding them in 17 parcels.”

The tricky situations in SAS Holding, an Istanbul-based real estate-looking Ponzi scheme, started when the Trade Ministry opened an investigation after a series of legal complaints.

On June 15, 41-year-old Sibel Koçan, a board member of the company, was killed by three gunmen while getting into her car with a suitcase full of 3.5 million Liras.

Just in hours, her ex-husband, Süleyman Aydın, also the owner of the company, jumped to his death from the 32nd floor of a residence in what appeared to be a suspicious suicide.

Authorities saw that the money flow of the company was still running even after the company’s accounts were seized.

Because the members of the Ponzi scheme were “collecting and using cash only.”

“I went to a residence suite belonging to Sibel Koçan’s sister, Sema. There were suitcases full of cash money. A name was written on every suitcase. We were supposed to deliver those money to those people,” a gang member said in police testimony.

“There were empty parcels. We filled 17 parcels with some 60 million Turkish Liras in cash. We smuggled the money out of the residence suite in disguise of moving houses,” he continued.

The police units found out various houses and villas worth millions of Turkish Liras across the country belonging to some relatives of the company founders, however, some 8 million Turkish Liras worth of luxury sports cars in the company’s inventory are missing.

Also, due to cash-flow, and the deaths of the two company founders, the amount of the embezzled money is not exactly known.