Turkey’s iGaming crackdown used AI tool AVCI to identify 194 suspects in Telegram chats on 3 November 2026

Turkish law enforcement has been using AVCI, an AI-powered OSINT system built by the Istanbul Police, to scan social media and messenger activity for links to offshore iGaming operators targeting Turkey. In the latest nationwide action, that matters because the enforcement net now appears to reach not just owners and senior managers, but also payment agents, affiliates, retention staff, and other operators around the stack.

1. On 3 November 2026, Turkish authorities carried out a coordinated raid across 39 provinces and detained 151 people linked to offshore iGaming operators. The total number of detained or arrested people for links to offshore iGaming operations is now approaching 2,500.
2. AVCI stands for Açık Kaynak İstihbaratı Analiz Sistemi, an open-source intelligence analysis system using artificial intelligence. It was developed by the Istanbul Police to detect criminal activity online.
3. The system processes large volumes of messages, posts, and images from social media and messenger apps, including Telegram. It uses natural language processing (NLP), slang recognition, emoji analysis, and image analysis to flag suspicious activity.
4. AVCI is also used to map connections between accounts, identify the presumed roles of people linked to offshore iGaming operators, and build suspect profiles. Public details on the algorithms and technical access to private chats have not been disclosed.
5. On 3 November 2026, AVCI identified several Telegram chats tied to offshore iGaming operators and established the identities of 194 people from those chats. Of them, 151 were detained, while the rest are still being sought.

For high-risk operators and their payment partners, the point is not subtle: if a jurisdiction is pairing broad raids with AI-assisted OSINT, the usual comfort blanket of “they only go after the top guys” disappears fast. In practice, the enforcement model described here reaches across owners, C-level staff, payment agents, drops, SSM specialists/affiliates, and retention managers.