Turkey seeks up to 40 years in prison in illegal gambling payments case tied to Paymix

Turkish prosecutors have filed charges against 57 suspects in what they say is the biggest illegal gambling case in recent years. For PSPs and payment companies, the useful part is obvious: the case is built around payment infrastructure, crypto conversion, and cross-border routing rather than just betting sites.

1. The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said the defendants face prison terms ranging from six to 39 years on charges including establishing a criminal organization, laundering criminal proceeds, and facilitating illegal gambling aimed at Turkish citizens. The case is being handled with support from Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board, MASAK.
2. At the center of the indictment is Fincrypto UAB (Paymix), a Malta-registered company. Prosecutors allege it provided payment infrastructure and crypto services that allowed illegal betting operators to move and hide criminal proceeds, with the total amount of bets processed estimated at about 210 billion Turkish lira (around 4.5 billion euro).
3. Investigators say the illicit funds moved through payment institutions and were then converted into cryptocurrency before being sent onward. The prosecutors also say they uncovered a cross-border structure spanning Turkey, Northern Cyprus, Malta, Albania, and Dubai.
4. The indictment describes 56 illegal gambling platforms, around 14 million registered gaming accounts, databases linked to three million Turkish ID numbers, and eight million mobile phones. It also refers to more than 500 physical and virtual servers, 800 VPN accounts, 600 remote access devices, and dozens of management systems used to run the platforms, customer accounts, and money flows.
5. Prosecutors say the organization was led by Basel Holding founder Burak Başel. They claim his shareholdings effectively gave him control over Paymix, while he also held assets in companies connected to gambling software development and payment services.

The investigation is part of a broader enforcement drive under Turkey’s Ministry of Justice led by Akın Gürlek. For high-risk PSPs, the signal is simple: Turkish authorities are treating gambling payments, crypto rails, and offshore company structures as one connected case file, not separate problems.