1- BETTING FRAUD AND ILLEGAL BETTING
Betting fraud crime and punishment
It requires the penalties specified in TCK Articles 157 and 158. Accordingly, a prison sentence of 1 to 5 years and a judicial fine of up to 5,000 days are imposed. If information systems, banks or credit institutions are used as tools, a qualified form of fraud occurs. In this case, a prison sentence of 3 to 10 years is imposed within the scope of TCK 158.
Crime and Punishment of Illegal Betting
It is a crime to place bets without a license issued by the Spor Toto Organization. According to Article 5 of Law No. 7258; Those who enable unlicensed gaming or provide space and opportunity for it will be sentenced to imprisonment from 3 to 5 years and a judicial fine of up to 10,000 days.
Some examples of these crimes committed in various ways are;
a)Someone calls the victim and tells him that he is being investigated by the prosecutor’s office or fined by the court for betting illegally. In order to avoid these accusations, they usually request money to be deposited into untraceable bank accounts. The victim who refuses to pay money or abandons it at some point may be subject to blackmail and threats on the grounds that he is betting illegally. At this stage, fake identities and documents are frequently used to further frighten the victim.
b) He says that he has earned a large amount of money from betting sites and wants some of the amount to be paid in order to access it. In order not to lose a large amount of money, the victim becomes the loser of the fraud through carelessness and pure emotions.
c) Some social media accounts are stolen and the story is shared. It is mentioned in the story that money was deposited somewhere and a lot of money was earned. The fraudster acts as a friend of the victim, and the victim develops trust with his friend.
Illegal betting sites are not easy to track. Because these sites are far from the control of states and it is difficult to determine where they operate. Therefore, when the victim loses money to sites like this, he or she benefits from little state protection.
It becomes impossible to follow the transactions as well as the websites. Thus, the victim is left without evidence and interlocutor.
It is widely used by terrorist organizations because it is difficult to track and its financing is high.
What needs to be done: First of all, as in most cyber crimes, the actions must be taken immediately by both the victim and the state enforcement authority. All kinds of evidence should be collected and a criminal complaint should be filed, and if the betting site is illegal, it should be reported to MASAK (Financial Crimes Investigation Board).
2) FOREX PROFIT PROMISE
First of all, what is Forex?
It refers to all of the global markets where foreign exchange is traded, taking into account the exchange rates between the currencies of two different countries. Since it allows leveraged transactions, foreign exchange trading can be done through instant changes.
Forex is a legal market and is regulated by the CMB in Turkey. What is important for the victim here is whether the platform on which the transaction will be made is licensed or not.
A person who thinks that he has suffered damage or loss of rights due to the legal platform will be able to seek his rights. Because the organization is recognized by the Turkish State, its transactions are followed and the addressees are known. At this point, organizations that promise higher profits, are illegal and are not controlled by the CMB, and if a person claims his rights, legal remedies are extremely limited due to insufficient evidence and information available. The way they happen is as follows:
When you want to withdraw your money as a result of the transactions, the illegal organization refuses to give your money. The reason why fraud is not detected here is that everything happens normally until the time you want to withdraw your money.
There is no separate crime type or aggravating circumstance specified in the Turkish Penal Code for the act of defrauding people by establishing a pyramid scheme. Fraud through pyramid schemes is the simplest form of the crime of “fraud”. But the founder and manager of the pyramid chain
It is determined whether the crime is qualified or not according to the actions of its or its members. At the same time, committing the crime through a company or cooperative constitutes a qualified element.
3)BORSA TELEGRAM GROUPS
In applications that enable mass correspondence, such as Telegram, stock exchange groups are established and certain people provide transactions to members of the group under the name of investment advice. Here, the victim listens to the advice of the other party and earns a large amount of money in a short time. When the victim sees that what the advice giver says comes true, he begins to feel unconditional trust. Afterwards, investments are made through manipulation and the victim faces the danger of losing all his money after a single transaction. In this case, the party giving the advice planned this transaction and defrauded the victims through manipulation. However, it is extremely difficult to say that fraud has been committed in such cases.
Because volunteering is at the forefront. At the same time, the person can claim that he did not intend to commit a crime, that he was just giving advice and that he also lost money. In short, the person can claim that his intention was not to deceive or harm the victim. At this stage, it is essential to prove that the purpose of the person suspected of fraud is to deceive and that he/she fraudulently harms others and uses this for his own benefit. Controlling the suspect’s identity and bank accounts is very difficult due to the possibility of being abroad and making transactions with illegal accounts that the states cannot control.
The biggest obstacles for victims who have been defrauded through virtual means to seek their rights are;
a) The counterparty is usually outside Turkey and they make money in and out through uncontrolled platforms (especially through crypto currencies).
b) At the point when the victim realizes that he/she has been defrauded, the other party can get rid of the records containing criminal elements and easily hide his identity. What the victim party needs to do when he realizes the fraud is to record the correspondence as much as possible in case the other party deletes the correspondence.
