Turkey ran two separate raids against illegal online betting on 3 November 2026, and both are now in court. The larger one, led by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, went after groups that took bets over Telegram and other messaging apps. The Interior Ministry said the suspects were found with AVCI, an AI-supported analysis tool from the Istanbul police cybercrime unit, and that 151 people were detained in the first wave across 39 provinces.
121 jailed in the Telegram case
By 7 November the case had grown. According to the prosecutor’s figures reported by NTV, 194 suspects were targeted and 169 detained. Courts remanded 121 of them in custody, 45 were released under judicial supervision, and prosecutors let 3 go. The same report says a review by MASAK, Turkey’s financial intelligence unit, found a high volume of money moving through the suspects’ accounts. No total has been published.
The ministry gave no detail on how AVCI works beyond calling it AI-supported. Its statement says the tool helped identify who the suspects were and what role each played in the betting operation. Press reports on the software’s message counts and features have not been confirmed by an official source, so we leave them out here.
The Aydin case: TRY 3.48bn through bank accounts
The second raid came from the Aydin provincial gendarmerie in western Turkey, under the Aydin prosecutor. Its own statement of 6 November says bank accounts used for illegal betting showed TRY 3.484bn in transactions, and that the case covers money laundering as well as betting. Of 37 people detained in 14 provinces, 34 were remanded and 3 were placed under judicial control. At the ECB’s reference rates for 3 November, TRY 3.484bn is about $70m, or about €62m.
Reports from the news agency İHA add the asset side. Investigators froze 467 bank accounts, 4 crypto-asset accounts and 4 cars, and they had 40 suspects on the list, 3 of whom were still being sought. That ratio is the useful part for this site. In this case, the money moved through hundreds of ordinary bank accounts, and crypto was a small part of what was frozen.
Key facts
Istanbul case: 39 provinces; 194 targeted, 169 detained, 121 remanded, 45 under judicial control, 3 released.
Aydin case: 14 provinces; TRY 3.484bn in bank-account transactions; 37 detained, 34 remanded.
Frozen in Aydin: 467 bank accounts, 4 crypto-asset accounts, 4 cars.
Date of both raids: 3 November 2026.
Sources: Interior Ministry, Aydin Gendarmerie Command, NTV, İHA via Aydınlık.
Why it matters for GambleFi
Telegram is where a lot of crypto-casino marketing happens, and it is also where Turkish police now look first. This case shows that a group chat no longer hides an operation from investigators who can tie accounts to people. The same shift is visible elsewhere. Brazil flagged more than a thousand Telegram groups in its betting cleanup, and Thai regulators checked crypto firms over gambling wallets.
The Aydin numbers also show the limits of the “crypto runs black-market betting” story. In Cambodia, USDT on TRON carried casino money. In this Turkish case, bank accounts carried almost all of it. For iGaming tokens, the GambleFi coins issued by onchain casinos, the risk to watch is where enforcement goes next. Platforms that serve blocked markets can still face police action on the ground, as the Thai police searches in the Shuffle case showed, even when the token itself sits offshore. Our Sweden IP-block post and the UK source-of-funds case cover how licensed markets handle the same question. This is a news summary, not legal or investment advice. The GambleFi FAQ explains how crypto casinos and iGaming tokens are regulated.