Call centre, forex and crypto investment fraud in Türkiye: what is charged, and what moves it.

Turkish law has one fraud offence and a list of ways of committing it that raise the sentence. The base offence, dolandırıcılık, is TCK 157: deceiving a person by fraudulent conduct and thereby obtaining a benefit for yourself or another, to the loss of that person or someone else. It carries one to five years' imprisonment and a judicial fine of up to five thousand days.

Almost no investment-fraud file is charged that way. TCK 158 lists twelve aggravated limbs. The one that decides these cases is limb (f): the offence committed by using information systems, banks or credit institutions as the instrument. A trading platform, a dialler, a CRM, a messaging account, a transfer into a collection account — any of these can supply limb (f). This is why an operation run from a room full of laptops starts higher than a fraud committed face to face.

What limb (f) does to the numbers

The general range in TCK 158/1 is three to ten years and a judicial fine of up to five thousand days. But the last sentence of that paragraph sets a separate floor for limbs (e), (f), (j), (k) and (l): the lower limit of the prison sentence cannot be less than four years, and the judicial fine cannot be less than twice the benefit obtained from the offence.

Two things follow at once. A four-year floor puts the case out of reach of hükmün açıklanmasının geri bırakılması, which under CMK 231/5 is available only where the sentence imposed is two years or less. And the judicial fine acquires a floor that the day system alone would not produce: whatever the calculation under TCK 52 yields — a number of days multiplied by a daily amount set at between one hundred and five hundred Turkish lira — the resulting fine cannot be less than twice the benefit obtained from the offence. Where the alleged benefit is measured in millions, so is that floor.

Where crypto sits

Operating as a crypto asset service provider without authorisation is a distinct offence. Article 109/A of the Capital Markets Law no. 6362, added in 2024, punishes natural persons and the officers of legal persons found to be carrying on that activity without permission with three to five years' imprisonment and a judicial fine of five thousand to ten thousand days. It is charged alongside fraud, not instead of it. A file about a fictitious exchange can therefore carry both.

TCK 158/3 contains two separate increases, written in one sentence, and the distance between them is measured in years.

• Where the offence is committed by three or more persons together, the sentence to be imposed is increased by half.
• Where it is committed within the activity of an organisation established to commit offences, the sentence to be imposed is increased by one full amount — doubled.

The organisation is not a description of a busy office. It is a defined thing. Under TCK 220/1, an organisation exists only where there are at least three members and where its structure, membership and its means and instruments are suitable for committing the intended offences. Where the prosecution establishes one, the organisation is punished separately: TCK 220/4 provides that where an offence is committed within the organisation's activity, punishment is also imposed for that offence. Two sentences, not one.

The ranges, as the Code sets them

The two limbs of 158/3 are written as alternatives in a single sentence, and which of them is applied — and whether both can be — is contested. It is worth arguing, because on a four-year floor the difference between an increase by half and a doubling is the difference between six years and eight before anything else is added.

These are statutory frames, not predictions. What is done inside them is the subject of the next two sections.

Boiler-room operations are executed as mass detentions. The building is entered, the equipment is seized, and everyone present is taken. Sorting who did what comes later, which means the early decisions are made about you before anyone has looked at your role.

Under CMK 91, custody may not exceed twenty-four hours from the moment of apprehension, excluding the time strictly necessary to bring you before the nearest judge, which cannot itself exceed twelve hours. For offences committed collectively — which is how these files are opened — the public prosecutor may extend custody by written order, each extension no more than one day, up to three days in total. The extension order must be served on the person immediately.

The consulate

CMK 95/2 is short and specific. Where the person apprehended or held in custody is a foreign national, his situation is notified to the consulate of the state of which he is a national unless he objects in writing. It is a default, not a request you have to make. Whether you want it is a real decision, and it should be taken deliberately rather than by signing a form in Turkish that has not been read to you.

How long detention can run

Under Article 14 of Law no. 5235 the competent court is determined by the upper limit of the statutory penalty, disregarding causes of aggravation and mitigation. For both TCK 158 and TCK 220/1 that upper limit is ten years, which keeps these cases out of the ağır ceza mahkemesi and in the asliye ceza mahkemesi.

That normally means an investigation-phase detention limit of six months under CMK 102/4. But the same paragraph sets a longer limit for collectively committed offences: one year and six months, extendable by a further six months with stated reasons. Two years in the investigation phase alone, before an indictment exists. CMK 102/1 then sets the ceiling for cases outside ağır ceza jurisdiction at one year, extendable by six months where necessary with reasons — and how that figure sits beside the longer investigation-stage ceiling is itself argued in these files.

The file may be closed to your lawyer

Under CMK 153/2, access to the investigation file may be restricted by judicial decision where it would endanger the purpose of the investigation — and TCK 220 is one of the offences for which that restriction may be ordered. It is common in organisation files. What it cannot cover is set out in CMK 153/3: the record of your own statement, expert reports, and the records of proceedings you were entitled to attend. Those must be given to your lawyer whatever else is withheld, and they are usually enough to work out what the allegation against you actually is.

The first work is not argument. It is separation — pulling one person out of a file written about a room.

Role, not presence

These files are large and they are largely documentary: seizure records for handsets and computers, CRM exports, call recordings and their transcripts, sales scripts, shift and payroll records, transfer records from collection accounts, and complainant statements taken abroad. The question the court has to answer about each defendant is narrow: what did this person do, and what did this person know. A script found on a shared drive is evidence about the operation. It is not, by itself, evidence that the person reading it knew the platform was fictitious. Establishing which of the two the file supports is done from the material, not from assertions about intention.

Member, helper, or employee

TCK 220/2 punishes membership with two to five years. TCK 220/7 covers the person who is not part of the hierarchy but knowingly and willingly assists the organisation: he is punished as a member, but that sentence may be reduced by up to one third according to the nature of the assistance. Continuity, hierarchy, discipline and knowledge of the aim are what separate a member from someone who was paid a wage, and they are established or defeated on the record — group chats, instructions, how the money moved, how long the person was there.

One offence or many

TCK 43 governs the chained offence. Paragraph 1 applies where the same offence is committed more than once, at different times, against one person, under a single decision to offend; paragraph 2 where a single act harms several people. In either case one sentence is imposed and increased by one quarter to three quarters. Where a number of complainants were deceived by separate acts at separate times, the ordinary consequence is separate offences and separate sentences. Which characterisation the indictment adopts, and whether it survives the chronology, moves the total by years.

Restitution

Fraud is one of the offences to which TCK 168 applies. Where the perpetrator, the instigator or the aider personally shows remorse and fully makes good the victim's loss, by returning what was taken or compensating it, the sentence is reduced by up to two thirds if this is done before prosecution begins, and by up to one half if it is done after prosecution begins but before judgment. Partial restitution counts only with the victim's consent (TCK 168/4). In a file with two hundred complainants this is not a general strategy; it is an arithmetic exercise done complainant by complainant, and its value depends entirely on which side of a deadline it falls.

The 2026 reduction for account holders

TCK 158/4, added in 2026, addresses the person whose entire participation consisted of handing over a payment instrument, or the information or means needed to use an account held at a bank, brokerage, payment service provider or crypto asset service provider. Where participation in the fraud is limited to that act, the sentence is reduced by half. A significant number of people swept up in these operations are in exactly that position and are charged as though they were not.

The interpreter, and what is actually translated

Under CMK 202, where a defendant does not know Turkish well enough to explain himself, an interpreter appointed by the court translates the essential points of the accusation and the defence. That is the standard: essential points, not the whole hearing and not the file. The same applies to a suspect questioned during the investigation, where the interpreter is appointed by the judge or the prosecutor. CMK 202/4 adds a further right: on the reading of the indictment and after the prosecution's closing opinion, you may make your oral defence in another language you state you can express yourself better in, through an interpreter you choose from the official list — and the cost of that interpreter is not met by the State.

In a file built on recorded calls in English, German, Russian or Arabic, the translation of those recordings is not administrative. It is the evidence, and a disputed transcript is challenged the way any other expert product is challenged.

Being released is not being free to leave

Adli kontrol under CMK 109 is the alternative to detention, and the first obligation on the list — CMK 109/3-a — is a prohibition on leaving the country. Others include reporting at fixed intervals, surrendering a driving licence, and depositing a sum of money fixed by the judge as a guarantee. Under CMK 109/6, time spent under judicial control is not deducted from a sentence, except for house arrest and the treatment measures. A case that runs two years can therefore cost two years in Istanbul that count for nothing at the end of it.

If there is a sentence

Conditional release is ordinarily at half the sentence under Article 107/2 of Law no. 5275. But Article 107/4 sets a different rate where the conviction is for founding or managing an organisation, or for an offence committed within an organisation's activity: two thirds. On the same nominal sentence, an organisation finding therefore adds years inside the prison as well as years to the sentence itself.

And under TCK 59, a foreign national sentenced to imprisonment is reported to the Ministry of the Interior for assessment of deportation — after a decision on execution under probation or on conditional release, and in any event once the sentence has been served. The immigration file does not close because the criminal one has.

It cannot tell you what is in your file. The articles above are the same for everyone; what decides a case is which limb of TCK 158 the prosecutor has written, whether TCK 220 appears at all, what the seized devices contain, and what was said in a statement given in the first day. None of that is on this page, and anyone who offers you an assessment of your position without reading the indictment is guessing.

It cannot tell you that I only read the script is a defence. It is a factual claim about knowledge, and it is either supported by the record — how you were recruited, what you were told, what you were paid, what you did when a client asked to withdraw — or it is not. It is worth making only after the material has been read, and it is weakened, sometimes fatally, by a statement given without a lawyer and without an interpreter you understood.

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