Are you a gamer? If so, you may be familiar with Farmville, the social network game where you raise animals and enjoy farming activities with your friends. Resembling nothing so much as the decade-old game, Mehmet Aydin first established Farm Bank (Ciftlik Bank) in Northern Cyprus at the end of 2016, boasting, “Invest 200,000 Turkish liras [$51,000] and you will earn 50,000 liras [$13,000] a month” complete with an investment handbook. His offer was too good to be true, but it proved too good to resist for about 80,000 people in Turkey. On March 12, after months of reports about the various pyramid or Ponzi characteristics of this scheme, prosecutors opened an investigation into Aydin and his companies based on the complaints of 20 Farm Bank members. Aydin had already left Turkey and is in Uruguay, where he obtained a residency permit. His soon-to-be ex-wife, Sila Soysal, was taken into custody on March 14. Aydin's scheme is estimated to have stolen tens of millions of dollars. There is also speculation that Mehmet Aydin might not even be his real name.

So how did a 26-year-old man establish such a lucrative scheme right under the public eye? With an insidiously innocent-seeming first step. You can become a member for free, but you start making a profit when you make the game “real,” meaning you spend money to buy virtual animals. An estimated 500,000 people signed up as members, while around 80,000 invested money. The latter believed they were actually buying animals with the money they invested in the game and that their returns were the profits of a real farm. Its Twitter account is still active, but its Facebook account and website have been taken down.

Al-Monitor asked a professor of psychology how this young man was able to convince tens of thousands of people to invest significant amounts of money. The professor, who asked that his name not be revealed, said, “Initially the game started with young, unemployed men who spend too much time at coffee houses. They made some profit, particularly if they left the game after collecting their returns. Initially, Farm Bank handed out a good amount of cash to these first-round players, who became the publicity agents for the game. They got their family members or friends to invest. The game’s name is also important here. Farming is a nostalgic word for the urban crowds of big cities in Turkey. The value of meat competes with gold here. So the idea that you are buying a cow is safe and appealing to people.”

He added “Also, many of those who have given him money did not see this as online gambling. It is called a bank, and you trust your money in a bank. If it were presented as gambling, I strongly doubt so many people would have been conned. Plus, the company was smart to use Islamist and ultra-nationalistic themes to create the illusion that they are working for Turkey. In their commercials, they used actors who have been outspoken against the coup in patriotic sitcoms familiar to the public.” Crucially, the Turkish public identifies with these characters and acts as though they are real. Some go so far as to publish an obituary in the paper when their favorite character passes away in the soap opera. While promoting Farm Bank’s sham farms, these actors repeated lines from Erdogan, even talked about Jerusalem as a red line. Crowds joined in chanting "Allahu Akbar." At these events, politicians in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) made speeches praising the farms as “local and contributing to national production,” thanking Aydin and telling the crowds that they will support Farm Bank. In November, the mainstream media frequently published reports of Farm Bank’s grandiose projects. Reports claimed that 30% of the funds were given as subsidies by the government. All of this must have inspired great confidence.