On July 31, 2016, a new mobile app called Çiftlik Bank landed in the Turkish App Store. The pitch was simple on purpose: it looked like a light farm game, but it also promised investment-style returns. Users bought digital animals, ran a virtual farm, and were told their spending would help fund real farms in Turkey. In exchange, they were promised a share of earnings from products like milk, honey, and meat. What started as something people treated like a trend later became one of Turkey’s most talked-about fraud cases, tied to Mehmet Aydın.
Aydın became the public face of the project, and his story did not fit the image of a polished finance founder. He grew up in Bursa in a modest household, left school early, and worked service jobs. For a while he tried to build a name for himself in the local rap scene, then shifted toward online games and the kinds of apps that keep people spending in small, constant steps. With a designer, he helped put together a close copy of Farmville, and it pulled users in fast. Within months, the game was no longer just a game, it was a money machine.
The public side of Ciftlik Bank was built to feel real and safe. Aydın showed up at “farm opening” events and was photographed with local governors and mayors, which gave the project a stamp of legitimacy in the eyes of many users. The company also used well-known TV actors as brand ambassadors, which made the whole thing look like a normal business, not a risky bet. More than a hundred “Farm Bank” shops opened around the country and sold items like honey, cheese, and sausages said to come from the company’s animals. At its peak, the platform claimed huge user numbers, and many people put in serious money, sometimes by taking loans or selling property.
Investigators later said the business model did not match the promise. Many of the “real” farms were described as show sites or small operations that could not produce anything close to the returns being advertised. Payouts to earlier users relied on money coming in from newer users, which is the basic Ponzi structure. Once new deposits slowed, complaints picked up, especially in late 2017, when people said payments were delayed or stopped. Regulators then started pulling on the thread and followed the money through a web of companies.
When the scheme finally unraveled, more than 100,000 victims were left with serious financial damage. Aydın fled to Uruguay and later Brazil, and he did not exactly lie low, posting videos that showed yachts and expensive cars, including Ferraris. After years on the run and an Interpol red notice, he turned himself in at the Turkish Consulate in São Paulo in 2021. Back in Turkey, he claimed he had only $13 left after spending or gambling away what he took. Prosecutors have pursued sentences that add up to as much as 89,000 years for him and alleged accomplices.