The Central Bank of Iran has sent the details of 450,000 bank cards used in online betting and gambling websites to the judiciary, in line with measures for combating online casinos.
"These cases are placed in three categories, whereby some have been merely cautioned about their illegal activities, some have received warnings from the judiciary bodies over their online betting activities and the third group involved in complex activities are set to face a court ruling," Abdolnasser Hemmati, the CBI governor, was quoted as saying by IRIB News.
"We are determined to combat online betting and gambling websites," he said, noting that several bank accounts have also been blocked recently, as part of the measures.
Press reports say there has been an increase in online gambling and betting. Experts say such cyber and financial crime is spreading fast and should raise the alarm, particularly in the cyber and payment sectors. Gambling is banned in Iran since 1979.
CBI says it is using a smart platform to detect and block unauthorized payment gateways, developed and used by online betting and gambling websites.
“The smart detection of unauthorized payment gateways has begun. It allows us to quickly detect illegal payment gateways and block them automatically,” Mehran Moharramian, CBI's deputy for innovative technologies, was quoted as saying by the CBI website.
It has identified 70,000 online casinos and sent the names to the judiciary, Moharramian had said earlier in a post on his Twitter account.
"The issue of confronting illegal payment gateways related to online casinos and betting websites has been on the CBI agenda for a long time … We have managed to detect and block 20,000 payment gateways or bank accounts related to illegal websites,” the official said.
“Payment gateways used by online casinos are not authorized by the banking and payment network. They usually rent gateways, bank accounts and bank cards for their prohibited activities.”
Shaparak, the body in charge of supervising the domestic payment network, recently announced that it has blocked 3,540 payment gateways used by online betting and gambling sites since the beginning of the current fiscal year in March 2020.
The company’s “risk committee” is tasked with finding and plugging loopholes that can endanger the network, including techniques used by illegal betting and gambling, according to Kazem Dehqan, the head of Shaparak.
