Police arrest six in illegal online gambling crackdown
SIX men accused of being behind an illegal online gambling operation were remanded in custody, the latest in a string of suspects to be arrested as part of a police crackdown.
They all appeared before Girne District Court on Monday, having been detained following a “complaint” from a gambler who said he had been denied a large prize.
The men were named as Nodir Pulatov, Hakan Törehan, Cemal Kandemir, Mehmet Mustafa Gün, Berat Tolga Uzaldı and Emrullah Ünlü.
Police officers arrested Pulatov after a swoop on his Spelia Trading premises in Girne uncovered evidence that he had been “providing live support” for “illegal betting and gambling” websites, the court was told.
Pulatov admitted refusing to pay out a 45,000TL prize on the grounds that the player was a “TRNC citizen”.
The other suspects were arrested following a search of their Girne work address belonging to a company called Gör-Gez, owned by Törehan, which had allegedly been supplying “financial support” to the gambling websites.
More than 26,000TL in cash, “hundreds of bank books, sim cards and bank cards”, 57 computers, and phones used to access “the details of 58 bank accounts”, along with “thousands of pages of documents and certificates”, were seized during the raid, the court heard.
Judge Mesut Mesutoğlu agreed to a request from detectives to be allowed more time to complete their investigation, amid suspicion that the illicit websites could be part of a money-laundering ring.