Dubai Regulator Fines Exchange Tied to Iran Gambling Ring

Dubai’s virtual-asset regulator has fined an unlicensed cryptocurrency exchange and ordered it to shut down after investigators tied it to one of the world’s largest illegal online gambling networks and a $4 billion Iranian sanctions-evasion operation.

The exchange, Shelbit, sat at the center of a money-moving system that gave a sprawling Farsi-language gambling network, Iran’s central bank, and other sanctioned Iranian entities access to global cryptocurrency markets, according to a Reuters investigation published on July 31, 2026 that drew on blockchain data from two crypto-investigation firms and an independent analyst.

On July 24, 2026, the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, known as VARA, issued a notice imposing financial penalties on Shelbit General Trading and ordered it to cease all unlicensed virtual-asset activity in or from Dubai. The regulator found the exchange still serving customers without a licence, onboarding users without the identity checks UAE law requires, and marketing itself without authorisation, all in breach of the emirate’s anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing rules.

VARA cast the case as more than a consumer-protection failure. The exposure it identified, the regulator said, “extends beyond consumer protection to more egregious cross-border transactions with the propension to impact the integrity of the UAE financial system.”

It was not VARA’s first move against Shelbit. The regulator and Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism had already taken action in 2025, when VARA issued a cease-and-desist notice in January and fined the exchange for offering and advertising unlicensed services. The money kept moving anyway.

What the investigation found

The blockchain records reviewed by Reuters show Shelbit processed at least $4 billion in cryptocurrency since May 2024, when it appears to have begun operating. Its main customers included a gambling operation of more than 2,000 Farsi-language websites offering slots, blackjack, and roulette to players inside Iran, where betting is banned.

“This is by far the biggest Iranian illegal gambling network ever discovered and one of the biggest in the world,” said John Wojcik, a former Infoblox researcher who spent seven years investigating illegal gambling for the United Nations before joining the blockchain-analytics firm TRM Labs.

The two men who front the sites, Iranian musicians and social-media influencers Sasha Sobhani and Pooyan Mokhtari, were convicted in absentia in Iran in 2023 over illegal gambling, along with Shelbit founder Siavash Kayvanpour. Iran’s penal code punishes gambling with prison and lashes, and was amended in 2023 to cover online betting. Both influencers denied any involvement in money laundering or sanctions evasion and said they did not know Kayvanpour or Shelbit.

Illegal online gambling has become a favored channel for cross-border laundering, and enforcers across Asia have dismantled a series of betting rings, including a Taiwan operation that led to the arrest of a former Macau junket director. What sets the Iranian network apart, investigators say, is its direct wiring into a sanctioned state. Reuters reported that Shelbit interacted with Iran’s central bank, processing at least $125 million tied to it, as well as with an Iranian exchange the US sanctioned earlier in 2026 and with wallets Israel has linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Former Iranian officials told the agency the Guard Corps had taken over the country’s online gambling to move money abroad, though Reuters said it could not confirm that the Guard Corps directly controlled Shelbit or the network.

The Binance exposure

At least $676 million flowed from Shelbit-linked wallets to Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, since May 2024, the data reviewed by Reuters shows. About $540 million of that moved after VARA’s 2025 fine.

Binance told Reuters that Shelbit never held an account on its platform and had never been sanctioned, and that the flows tied to it were not judged high-risk by an outside analytics firm. When users connected to Shelbit did touch the platform, the company said, it investigated the accounts, froze them, and reported them to law enforcement. Binance did not dispute processing the money.

The exchange is no stranger to this kind of scrutiny. US authorities fined Binance $4.3 billion in 2023 over anti-money-laundering failures that included processing Iranian crypto trades, and the company secured regulatory licences for its main trading platform in the UAE in December 2025.

A widening crackdown on Iranian crypto

The Shelbit case lands as US regulators tighten pressure on Iran’s digital-asset infrastructure. On June 2, 2026, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Nobitex, Iran’s largest digital-asset exchange, along with three smaller Iranian platforms, over transactions tied to the Guard Corps and other sanctioned entities. Iran’s central bank has been under US counter-terrorism sanctions since 2019. A Treasury spokesperson told Reuters the office was aware of the Shelbit allegations and was taking them seriously.

For regulators, the episode shows how unlicensed exchanges and illegal betting can combine into a laundering channel that ordinary banking controls miss. Financial watchdogs and gambling regulators increasingly treat the two as one problem: Australia’s regulator ordered bet365 to overhaul its money-laundering systems, and Britain is consulting on criminal penalties for sponsors of unlicensed gambling.

VARA’s notice does not name the influencers or settle who ultimately controlled the money, questions Reuters said it could not answer either. What the regulator has put on the record is narrower and firm: an exchange operating in Dubai without a licence, moving billions across borders in breach of the emirate’s money-laundering rules, and now ordered to stop.