Turkish gendarmerie teams have detained 28 more suspects in an expanding investigation into the PayCo electronic payment company over alleged money laundering, illegal betting and unlicensed forex schemes, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said on Tuesday.
Simultaneous raids were carried out across six provinces — İstanbul, Ankara, Adana, Antalya, Kocaeli and Yalova — by the İstanbul Provincial Gendarmerie Command’s Cybercrimes Unit, resulting in the detention of 28 suspects.
Searches and seizures were conducted at multiple locations, and efforts to collect financial and digital evidence are ongoing, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The latest detentions bring the total number of suspects taken into custody in the probe to 39. Out of the 11 suspects who were detained across four provinces in simultaneous raids as part of the investigation last week, nine were arrested while two were released under judicial supervision.
The investigation is being conducted by the prosecutor’s office’s Financial Crimes and Anti-Terror Financing Bureau, which claims that proceeds from illegal betting, unlicensed forex trading and fraud were laundered through PayCo’s electronic money infrastructure.
According to prosecutors, the money was moved through many companies in Turkey and abroad using financial and software tools to hide its origin.
In its statement the prosecutor’s office said the investigation was launched based on inspection reports from Turkey’s central bank and analyses by the Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK). The reports allegedly showed that illegal betting and forex-related crime proceeds were systematically funneled into the financial system through electronic money and payment service providers before being laundered via multiple corporate structures.
The second phase of the operation targets suspects accused of managing electronic money accounts and setting up transfer networks. Prosecutors said those detained included software engineers, IT staff and project managers alleged to have helped move and hide criminal proceeds.
Prosecutors said the alleged activities pointed to an organized structure rather than isolated transactions, citing the volume of financial flows, the number of individuals involved and the continuity of the operations.
An İstanbul court last week ordered the freezing and seizure of assets belonging to PayCo and several suspects to prevent the destruction of evidence and safeguard the ongoing investigation.
PayCo, founded in 2020 and based in İstanbul’s Ataşehir district, is a private financial-technology company with 51 to 200 employees, according to its LinkedIn profile. The firm provides a range of payment services, including e-wallets, QR code systems, virtual and mobile POS solutions, link-based payment systems and POS integration tools.
Prosecutors said the investigation is being pursued “with full diligence” to prevent the entry of criminal proceeds into the financial system and to uncover the alleged network in all its aspects.
The operation against PayCo is the latest in a series of high-profile investigations into financial institutions and digital platforms accused of enabling illegal activities in Turkey’s expanding fintech and online gaming sectors.