Russia’s FSB and Investigative Committee detail arrests of 24 people tied to PaySelection and Payment Center in online casino payment case

Russia’s FSB and the Investigative Committee said they had detained 24 members of an organized criminal group that, according to investigators, handled financial operations for banned online casinos. For PSPs and acquirers, the useful part is not the drama, but the signal: payment acceptance infrastructure, if tied to gambling flows, can become the main target of a criminal case.

1. Authorities said the case concerns a group that, in the investigators’ version, supported underground online casinos for years and moved billions of rubles abroad. That puts the focus squarely on the payment layer, not just the gaming operators themselves.
2. The FSB and the Investigative Committee said they detained the beneficiary of the online payment acceptance services PaySelection and Payment Center, along with 20 subordinates. The businessman faces up to 19 years in prison.
3. Searches were carried out at the offices of Payment Center, Gate Express and PaySelection. For high-risk PSPs, that is the part to watch: when investigators start with processing operations and then move into office searches, the compliance issue has already become a criminal one.
4. The authorities said they announced the details two months after the operational actions took place. In practice, that means the public statement arrived after the arrests, not before them, which is useful to remember when assessing how quickly a regulatory or law-enforcement issue can surface in this segment.