These local officials exploited their newly-found power to maximise revenue from their estates at no risk to themselves, mainly by increasing the tax burden on their subjects to intolerably high levels, without any interference from the state. Moreover, they faked Porte decrees in order to exploit neighbouring land, and oppressed and terrorised the subjects by promoting their owen people in the administration so that this exploitation could go on unchecked.
Several decades before the timars (fiefdoms) were finally converted into private hereditary estates (tsifliks), entire regions of the Greek area had already fallen into the control of prominent officials: in 1604 for example, the Vizir Casim controlled an area extending from Sterea Ellas to Trikala and Ioannina, which brought in revenues amounting to 1,200,000 akce. In the same year a Turkish official in Florina, with an even higher income, asked the state to approve the appointment of his own men in precisely those administrative services which oversaw the repayment of his own debt to the state. By the end of the century, the oppression and abuses of power were leading to long-term stoppages and insurrections, Macedonia in 1697 being a notable example.