Iran Illegal Gambling Network Routed $4B Via Dubai Crypto

One of the world’s largest illegal online gambling networks did not just take bets — according to a July 2026 Reuters investigation, it sat inside a $4 billion crypto pipeline out of Dubai, linking more than 2,000 Farsi casinos, influencer frontmen, and Iran’s sanctioned financial system through an unlicensed Shelbit crypto exchange.

What investigators found about the Iran illegal gambling network

According to Reuters, the network is a Farsi-language cluster of more than 2,000 websites offering slots, blackjack, and roulette. Cybersecurity firm Infoblox helped map technical links across domains that used different brands and registration histories. John Wojcik, a former Infoblox researcher who spent seven years investigating illegal gambling for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and is now a senior analyst at TRM Labs, told Reuters it is “by far the biggest Iranian illegal gambling network ever discovered and one of the biggest in the world.”

Gambling is outlawed in Iran, and the law was updated in 2023 to cover online games of chance. Penalties can include prison and lashing. Reuters reported that the network nonetheless appeared to access Iran’s domestic electronic payments system, which is closely overseen by the country’s central bank.

That combination — a banned product, mass consumer demand, and rails into hard currency — is why the story matters for licensed operators and compliance teams as much as for geopolitics. It is a mega-operator case study built outside any licensing system, with crypto cash-out and influencer acquisition layered on top. Similar patterns of illegal gambling inside larger money-movement webs have shown up elsewhere, including Dyutam’s coverage of Indonesia’s multi-site money-laundering bust and South Korea’s multi-billion illegal gambling empire.

How the Shelbit crypto exchange allegedly moved the money

Reuters identified Shelbit — commercially also called Shelbit Exchange, operated through Shelbit General Trading L.L.C. — as the hub. The exchange was unlicensed for virtual-asset activity in Dubai, had no public website at the time of reporting, and listed an office above a budget hotel in Deira. Staff at the address told a visiting Reuters reporter they had never heard of the company. The door sign named a watch-trading firm, Velorix Watches Trading LLC.

Siavash Kayvanpour, an Iranian expatriate, is described as running Shelbit. He did not respond to Reuters. Blockchain analysis reviewed by the outlet put at least $4 billion through Shelbit since May 2024. The gambling network was a major customer: tens of millions of dollars of its crypto were traced to Shelbit, and at least $130 million was processed for just one of the sites. Shelbit also processed at least $125 million linked to Iran’s central bank and at least $20 million from a suspected Iranian bitcoin-mining operation via intermediaries. It interacted with Nobitex, an Iranian exchange later sanctioned by the U.S., and with wallets the Israeli government has linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

On the way out, at least $676 million moved from Shelbit-linked addresses toward Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, since May 2024. About $540 million of that, according to the same dataset, moved after Dubai’s VARA had already ordered Shelbit to cease unlicensed activity in January 2025. Binance told Reuters that Shelbit never held a Binance account, that associated flows were not initially treated as high risk by an unnamed analytics firm, and that when associated users interacted with the platform its compliance program investigated, froze relevant accounts, and reported them to law enforcement. Binance did not dispute processing hundreds of millions of dollars for associated activity, but it has not independently confirmed the exact $676 million or $540 million figures.

Ban the market, then control it

The second frame of the story is not product design. It is how a banned market can become a financial bridge. Reuters reported that, years earlier, the IRGC took control of the largest gambling websites accessible inside Iran and has used them to move money abroad. Former Iranian officials and insiders interviewed for the investigation described the takeover of a lucrative illegal sector as part of a wider pattern: when large financial enterprises grow outside the security establishment, the IRGC moves to oversee them.

“When it comes to gambling, the IRGC learned the Islamic Republic’s most lucrative lesson early: declare something illegal, then control both the prohibition and the black market.”
— Miad Maleki, former OFAC associate director, quoted by Reuters

Independent researcher Rich Sanders went further on Shelbit itself, telling Reuters: “It’s an IRGC operation, and that’s plain as day.” Reuters explicitly said it could not determine whether the IRGC had direct control of the gambling network and Shelbit, who in the Iranian state controlled the sanctions-evasion operation, or where much of the crypto ultimately ended up. Those gaps matter. On-chain counterparties and expert claims are not the same as a courtroom finding of command and control.

The investigation also sits in a wider U.S. enforcement wave against Iranian crypto rails in 2025–2026: designations of UAE- and Hong Kong-linked oil-crypto facilitators for more than $100 million in activity, IRGC-linked offshore exchanges, Central Bank of Iran crypto wallet identifiers, and the June 2026 designation of Nobitex and other domestic Iranian exchanges. As of early August 2026 research, Shelbit itself did not appear on the public OFAC SDN list. A Treasury spokesperson told Reuters the department was aware of the allegations and taking them “very seriously.”

Influencers, lifestyle marketing, and 2023 convictions

Reuters says the gambling network was fronted by two high-profile Iranian influencers: Sasha Sobhani (given name Mohammad Javad), operating from Madrid with about 3.7 million Instagram followers, and Pooyan Mokhtari, who moved between luxury hotels in Hong Kong after being arrested in Dubai in late March 2026 and expelled 35 days later. Both flaunt luxury cars, yachts, and private-jet lifestyles while promoting gambling sites. Reuters identified more than 60 Iranian influencers promoting the websites, about half with more than one million followers.

In 2023, Iranian courts convicted Sobhani and Mokhtari as partners in an illegal gambling case (two years each, in absentia for the influencers) and Kayvanpour for assisting (three months). Brands named in prosecutions include abt90 and Hazarat. Both influencers denied that their sites formed one interconnected network; Infoblox’s technical clustering said otherwise. Both denied knowing Kayvanpour or Shelbit.

“I categorically deny any involvement in money laundering, sanctions evasion, terrorism financing or moving funds on behalf of the Iranian government, the Central Bank of Iran, the IRGC or any other Iranian state institution.”
— Sasha Sobhani, emailed statement to Reuters

Mokhtari denied Dubai allegations that he financed Iranian terrorist organizations hostile to the UAE and denied IRGC membership. He told Reuters he was not part of Iranian military groups. The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not answer specific questions about his arrest or visa status; it issued a general statement on disrupting illicit financial flows. For operator marketing teams, the lesson is structural: cross-border influencer affiliates can create brand, travel, and sanctions-adjacency risk even when the talent frames the work as “paid advertising only.”

VARA enforcement lag and the dual narrative

Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority — VARA, not the DIFC’s DFSA — is the competent regulator for Shelbit’s Dubai footprint. On 2 January 2025, VARA ordered Shelbit General Trading L.L.C. to cease unlicensed virtual-asset activity. On 24 July 2026, after Reuters sought comment, VARA published a Notice of Fines stating the entity had continued to provide VA services without a licence, onboard users without mandatory KYC, and market without authorisation. VARA imposed financial penalties and directed an immediate cease-and-desist. The notice said the exposure extended “beyond consumer protection to more egregious cross-border transactions with the propension to impact the integrity of the UAE financial system.” The public notice does not name Iran, gambling, or the $4 billion figure.

That timeline is the enforcement story licensed markets care about: detection without operational closure still left room for large on-chain volume. Reuters-linked data put about $540 million of Shelbit-to-Binance flows after the 2025 VARA action. Independent researcher Rich Sanders said he warned Binance about Shelbit’s Iran ties in October 2025; flows continued afterward, per the investigation’s dataset.

On 1 August 2026, a Shelbit LLC statement on shelbit.com rejected the media narrative. Former management said Shelbit LLC was a Georgian entity with a Tbilisi Free Industrial Zone general service licence for crypto brokerage and VASP activities, began winding down customer operations in December 2025, finished customer wind-down by January 2026, and had its Georgian registration cancelled on 30 July 2026. The statement says licensed activity was not conducted through a UAE company and “categorically rejects” knowing participation in money laundering, terrorist financing, illegal gambling, sanctions evasion, or work for sanctioned or governmental organizations. It also argues that blockchain wallet relationships are not proof of ownership, control, knowledge, or intent without further evidence.

Readers should hold both tracks: VARA’s public record names a Dubai General Trading L.L.C. for unlicensed VA activity and KYC failures; Reuters’ investigation ties that hub to Iranian gambling and sanctions-adjacent counterparties via blockchain analysis; Shelbit’s corporate rebuttal asserts a Georgian licensing history and wind-down and disputes intent. None of those tracks, as of this writing, is a final criminal conviction of the named influencers or Kayvanpour on the sanctions-evasion theory in a Western court.

What it means for operators, PSPs, and players

For licensed operators, the pattern is a compliance template, not a one-off headline. Unlicensed mega-networks compete for the same regional demand that regulated brands chase. Influencer marketing that glamorizes offshore or illegal play normalizes product categories regulators spend years trying to channel into licensed markets. Payment providers and crypto desks that sit on the same graphs as sanctioned central-bank wallets, mining clusters, or unlicensed VASPs inherit counterpart risk even when the immediate customer looks like a “gambling brand.”

For players, the consumer-protection case is blunt. Funds on illegal Farsi crypto-gambling sites have no meaningful recourse when balances vanish, and on-chain cash-out paths may mix recreational stakes with sanctions-adjacent liquidity. Licensing checks are not bureaucracy for its own sake; they are the difference between a regulator who can freeze an operator and a Deira mail-drop with no website. Dyutam’s guide on how to check if an online casino is licensed and safe covers the practical checklist. Macro context on how large unregulated play remains is in our report on the GCI unregulated online gambling figures for 2025.

Jurisdictions also attack illegal gambling through banks rather than only through websites. Turkey’s bank-led crackdown is one example of choking rails instead of chasing every domain — a contrast to crypto-native networks that try to route around traditional payment blocks. See Dyutam’s coverage of Turkey’s bank weaponization against illegal online gambling and Indonesia’s broader $68.7 billion illegal gambling crisis reporting.

FAQs

---

Sources

• Illicit Iranian gambling network helped pull off a $4 billion sanctions dodge — Reuters Investigations (31 July 2026)
• VARA Notice of Fines – Shelbit General Trading L.L.C. — Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (24 July 2026)
• Treasury sanctions Iranian digital asset exchanges including Nobitex — U.S. Department of the Treasury (2 June 2026)
• Treasury sanctions Iranian facilitators moving oil proceeds via crypto — U.S. Department of the Treasury (16 September 2025)
• Official Statement Regarding Recent Media Reports — Shelbit LLC (1 August 2026)
• Iran’s Underground Las Vegas — Washington Institute (2021)