Money moved through your account for a betting site. The charge is Law 7258, not fraud.

Law no. 7258 governs betting and games of chance on football and other sports competitions. Article 5 lists five separate acts, and every one of them applies only where the conduct is carried on without authority granted by law — that is, outside the licensed system.

Two things follow from the table. Moving the money is a distinct offence from running the site, and it is punished on the same scale. And placing bets yourself is not a crime at all: paragraph (d) is an administrative fine. The band written into the statute is five thousand to twenty thousand lira, raised at the start of each calendar year by the revaluation rate under article 17/7 of Law no. 5326. It is payable within one month of notification, with a twenty-five per cent reduction for payment in time, and it is challenged by application to the magistrate's court (sulh ceza) within fifteen days under article 27/1 of the same law.

The judicial fine attached to paragraph (c) is measured in days rather than lira. Under TCK 52 the court fixes a number of days — here between five and five thousand — and then a daily amount between one hundred and five hundred lira according to your means, and multiplies the two. At the ceiling that is between five hundred thousand and two and a half million lira. Under TCK 52/4 the court may allow up to a year from the judgment becoming final, or order payment in instalments — no fewer than four, over no more than two years — but neither is automatic.

Fraud has a different shape. It requires a person who was deceived and who lost property because of it. Under TCK 158/1(f), where banks, credit institutions or IT systems are used as the instrument, the range is three to ten years, the floor rises to four years, and the judicial fine cannot be less than twice the benefit obtained.

Article 5/1(c) of Law no. 7258 has no victim in it. The wrong is that money moved for an unlicensed operation, not that someone was tricked out of it. There is no complainant to withdraw a complaint, no loss to be made good, and no settlement to be reached. What the file turns on instead is narrower: what you knew about where the money came from.

The two tracks have also moved further apart. On 16 July 2026 a fourth paragraph was added to TCK 158 by Law no. 7589. Where a person's participation in fraud is limited to giving another person a payment instrument, or the credentials or means needed to use an account held at a bank, brokerage, payment service provider or crypto-asset service provider, the sentence is reduced by half. That reduction exists on the fraud track. Law no. 7258 contains nothing equivalent. If your only act was to let someone use your account, which article the prosecutor writes changes the arithmetic considerably — the same fact pattern is examined on our page on accounts used to receive other people's money.

Under TCK 21/1 an offence exists only where there is intent — the elements of the legal definition brought about knowingly and willingly. Law no. 7258 contains no negligent form. Receiving a transfer is not the offence. Lending an account to move money you knew was betting money is.

That is where these files are decided, and they are decided on the record rather than on anyone's recollection of it. Article 5 carries an added paragraph making the heavier investigative measures of the Code of Criminal Procedure available for the offences in 5/1 (a), (b), (c) and (ç), and for TCK 228/3 and 228/4: seizure of immovables, rights and receivables (CMK 128), the interception and recording of communications (CMK 135), the appointment of an undercover investigator (CMK 139, expressly whether or not the offence was committed within the activity of an organisation), and technical surveillance (CMK 140). Message traffic, transfer timings and counterparty accounts are often already in the file before you are asked anything.

The facts that carry the weight

• How many transfers, over what period, and whether money left again within minutes of arriving.
• Whether you kept a share, and how that share was described to you.
• Whether you handed over the card, the password, the SIM or the online banking credentials, and to whom.
• Whether the counterparties are accounts already identified in the investigation as payment channels for a named site.
• What you were told the money was, and whether anything in the messages contradicts it.

Two neighbouring articles are often added rather than substituted. TCK 228 covers providing a place or the means for gambling — defined in 228/6 as games played for gain in which profit and loss depend on chance — and 228/3 sets three to five years and a judicial fine of one thousand to ten thousand days where IT systems are used, increased by half under 228/4 where the act falls within the activity of an organisation. And because the minimum sentence under 5/1(c) is well above six months, the offence qualifies as a predicate for laundering under TCK 282, which carries three to seven years and a judicial fine of up to twenty thousand days.

Custody and remand

Custody under CMK 91 may not exceed twenty-four hours from apprehension, excluding the time needed to bring you before the nearest judge, which may not exceed twelve hours; for offences committed collectively the prosecutor may extend it in writing by no more than one day at a time, for three days. What happens inside that window is set out on our page on being arrested in Turkey.

Article 5 of Law no. 7258 is not among the offences listed in CMK 100/3, so no ground for remand is presumed. Remand requires concrete evidence of strong suspicion together with a ground under CMK 100/2: flight risk, or conduct raising strong suspicion of destroying evidence or pressuring witnesses. Against a foreign national the flight-risk argument is made almost as a matter of course, and it is answered with documents rather than assurances — a registered address, a residence permit, employment or study records — and with an offer of judicial control including surrender of the passport.

The money

The second paragraph of article 5 provides that assets devoted to or used in the games, assets forming the subject of the offence, and every kind of asset put up for them or obtained through them, are confiscated under the property and gain confiscation provisions of the Turkish Criminal Code. That is why a balance does not simply come back once questioning is over. Where an account is seized under CMK 128, the seizure is executed by immediate notice to the bank, and transactions made afterwards to defeat it are void.

The two-year line

The minimum under 5/1(c) is three years. TCK 62 allows a discretionary reduction of up to one sixth, which brings three years down to two years and six months. Deferral of the pronouncement of the judgment requires a sentence of two years or less (CMK 231/5), and so does suspension (TCK 51/1). On the charge as written, both sit out of reach. That is why the identity of the article matters more here than anything said about it afterwards, and it is where the wider picture on our page on illegal betting and gambling offences in Turkey begins.