Istanbul police AI exposes Telegram betting chain

• Raids across 39 provinces end with 121 suspects remanded in custody.
• AVCI flagged around 306,000 messages across 47 Telegram groups.
• A parallel Aydın probe finds TRY3.484bn in account flows linked to 40 suspects.

Turkish courts have remanded 121 suspects in custody pending trial after raids on betting networks that allegedly ran on Telegram and other digital platforms.

The Interior Ministry says AVCI, an AI-supported system built by Istanbul police, identified the suspects and their roles inside the illegal betting infrastructure.

Inside the Telegram sweep

The raids took place on 3 November across 39 provinces and targeted 194 suspects. Figures released on 7 November put detentions at 169, according to Turkish Minute.

Courts remanded 121 in custody. Another 45 were released under judicial supervision and three were freed without restrictions.

On the day of the raids, the Interior Ministry put the number caught at 151. The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office led the case with the city’s cybercrime police.

For offshore books, Telegram can carry the whole commercial chain. Promotion, customer acquisition and payment instructions all sit inside closed groups, beyond the reach of the domain blocking Turkey has relied on for years.

Reading the emojis

AVCI is an AI-supported open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis system, built to analyse publicly accessible information. The acronym also spells “hunter” in Turkish.

The software recognises the coded language, slang and emoji combinations used to advertise and settle bets. It analyses photos and videos, links accounts running under different names and maps relationships between members.

It can also retain copies of messages from closed groups even after users delete them. Clearing a chat once a promotion or deal has run, a routine safeguard for Telegram-based books, offers far less protection as a result.

The system flagged around 306,000 potentially incriminating messages across 47 Telegram groups in this case.

Proven on narcotics

Istanbul police first used AVCI against Telegram drug markets. NTV reported in February that it helped catch 325 dealers in the city.

Hürriyet has reported that AVCI decoded more than 5.8 million messages in Telegram groups and exposed 65 groups set up to commit crimes since 2025. In a 14-province narcotics case, Turkish media said it detected bot accounts and built city-by-city activity maps.

Betting followed. In May, police detained 108 people in 35 provinces after AVCI analysed around 600,000 messages.

That operation blocked 5,151 websites, Turkish Minute reported. Of those, 5,000 were betting platforms. The remainder comprised 111 promotional sites and 40 payment-facilitation sites, putting the marketing and cashier layers squarely in scope.

Rails under scrutiny

The money side is where the crackdown has moved fastest. In July, prosecutors combined AVCI output with field intelligence to identify 6,314 bank accounts across 32 banks. Those accounts were frozen as the World Cup final began.

The Aydın case that ran alongside this week’s raids followed the same pattern. MASAK, Turkey’s financial crimes board, identified TRY3.484bn in combined inflows and outflows across accounts linked to 40 suspects.

Gendarmerie units detained 37 people across 14 provinces on 3 November. Cumhuriyet later reported that 34 were remanded in custody and three released under judicial control.

Authorities placed precautionary measures on 467 bank accounts, four cryptocurrency accounts and four vehicles. Phones, computers, storage devices and SIM cards were seized during the searches.

Seven-second edge

Not every recent case targets the black market. The Istanbul prosecutor’s Illegal Betting and Sports Crimes Bureau is also pursuing an alleged scheme that exploited delayed live sports data.

Prosecutors allege a data analyst at Spordata, which supplies data and infrastructure to licensed sportsbooks, delayed live betting updates by about seven seconds, chiefly in tennis and volleyball. Associates with accounts at betting firms then allegedly bet after results were known.

The analyst was detained and remanded in custody on 21 July. MASAK found total inflows and outflows of around TRY192m across his accounts.

Eight more suspects were detained in late October. Four were remanded in custody and four placed under judicial control.

Prosecutors put the alleged losses to Spordata and its sportsbook clients at around TRY12m. For in-play trading teams, the case frames feed latency as a fraud risk inside the supply chain, not only a pricing issue.

Nine months, 901 operations

Justice Minister Akın Gürlek has put the scale of the campaign on record. Authorities ran 901 operations across all 81 provinces between February and 4 November.

Over that period, 15,710 suspects faced legal proceedings. Courts remanded 5,949 in custody and placed 3,570 under judicial control, Gürlek said. He added that investigators are tracing the networks’ financial links as well as their operations.

That works out at about 100 operations a month over the nine-month period, part of the wider illegal gambling war Ankara stepped up in 2026.

The campaign has an offshore dimension too. A report by the National Lottery Administration (MPİ) named Curaçao, Seychelles, Malta and the Isle of Man among the offshore licensing hubs used to channel Turkish users to illegal sites.

Where this lands

For licence holders in those jurisdictions, Turkish-facing traffic carries growing exposure. Prosecutors are building the capability to link Telegram promotion, payment runners and bank accounts to the brands they serve.

Telegram has no office or representative in Turkey, technology expert Ufuk Karakullukcu told Sabah in August 2025. AVCI works from what users post rather than relying on the platform to cooperate.

Affiliates and influencers promoting offshore brands sit in the same frame. The 111 promotional sites blocked in May show marketing being treated as part of the offence.

Payment providers and banks face the knock-on effect. Accounts named in Telegram cashier instructions are now visible to prosecutors, and freezes can run into the thousands.

Other markets are tightening in parallel. Cyprus wants zero tolerance on illegal operators, Britain’s Gambling Commission has used open banking data to track illegal gambling payments, and Romania’s former regulator chief has described how black-market payments are disguised as everyday purchases.