Fenerbahçe president and his brother get 2.5-year prison terms and $12,000 fines for promoting illegal gambling

The president of Turkish football club Fenerbahçe and his brother were sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and fined $12,000 each for promoting illegal gambling. For high-risk payment teams, the point is simple: when a promotion crosses into illegal gambling, the exposure is no longer just commercial — it becomes a regulatory and criminal one too.

1. The case concerns the president of Fenerbahçe, a Turkish football club, and his brother. Both received the same sentence: 2.5 years in prison and a $12,000 fine.
2. The charge in the source is promotion of illegal gambling. That matters for PSPs and acquirers because marketing activity around gambling can create a compliance problem even when the operator itself is not the direct payment counterparty.
3. The source does not provide the court name, the jurisdiction beyond Turkey, or any further procedural details. So the only hard point here is the sanction: prison time plus a cash penalty tied to illegal-gambling promotion.