On July 16, 2025, Istanbul police carried out a cybercrime operation targeting companies behind mobile fortune-telling services. Sertaç Taşdelen, founder of the Faladdin and Binnaz platforms, was taken into custody that day and ordered into pretrial detention by a judge on July 17.
The investigation went well beyond whether fortune-telling itself was suspicious. Authorities imposed seizure measures on bank and electronic-money assets, vehicles, vessels, and company interests. Istanbul police said that two vehicles, two vessels, and assets connected to two companies were valued at roughly TRY 107.5 million.
The central allegation was more serious: prosecutors suspected that revenue generated through fortune-telling services had been presented as legitimate corporate income and then laundered through financial transactions.
But calling this a case of “someone getting arrested for using AI to tell fortunes” would be misleading. AI itself was not the stated reason for the arrest. What makes the case unusual is that a modern mobile app ended up at the intersection of a century-old Turkish law, cybercrime provisions, and money-laundering rules.