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In a major coordinated law enforcement operation targeting cross-border financial crime, Turkish security forces have taken down an elaborate organized fraud network with alleged ties to Israeli principals that scammed victims across three continents out of at least $266 million over two years, Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek announced Friday.

The multi-agency investigation, carried out in partnership with Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and Interpol, uncovered 42 fraudulent call centers operated under the cover of 28 fake corporate entities, with 239 suspects currently identified as persons of interest in the case. Dawn raids were executed simultaneously across 236 locations in two major Turkish regions, Istanbul and Mugla, to disrupt the network’s operations.

According to Gurlek, investigators confirmed that individuals with documented links to Israel served as the primary owners and final beneficiaries of all the front companies involved in the scheme. Turkish law enforcement officials have connected this bust to the notorious transnational criminal syndicate widely referred to as the “Scam Empire”, a network that has operated across dozens of countries for more than a decade. The criminal group was first brought to widespread public attention in an expose by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which previously detailed how scam rings based out of Israel and European countries stole hundreds of millions from defrauded investors via deceptive telephone-based investment schemes.

The mechanics of the fraud follow a well-worn but effective pattern documented by investigators. The network hired multilingual customer service agents to lure victims from target regions into fraudulent foreign exchange investment schemes. Once victims signed up, they were granted access to controlled, fake investment platforms that displayed artificially inflated fabricated profits. This deceptive display convinced victims to deposit increasingly large sums of money, which was immediately siphoned off by the organizers. All stolen funds were quickly transferred out of Turkey to offshore bank accounts and untraceable cryptocurrency wallets, officials confirmed. Individual victims lost anywhere from $10,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars each, according to current victim statements and evidence collected during the raids.

One of the key alleged masterminds of the Turkish operation, identified only by the initials YA, is an Israeli national who also holds Portuguese citizenship, Turkish investigators confirmed. This bust is not the first high-profile case of Israeli-linked investment fraud targeting global victims: in 2016, Reuters exposed a similar scheme run by Israeli trading firm NRGbinary, which stole millions of dollars from European investors before Israeli authorities shut the company down later that year. In a 2025 follow-up investigation, OCCRP mapped out two similar scam call center networks operating out of Israel, Eastern Europe and Georgia that persuaded more than 32,000 global victims to invest a combined total of at least $275 million.

Investigators familiar with the current Turkish probe say the network mirrored operational structures documented in the earlier OCCRP investigation. Call center agents were required to use entirely false identities and forged supporting documents to build trust with victims. Against a backdrop of escalating diplomatic tensions between Turkey and Israel in recent years, Turkish security officials assess that Israel-based scam networks have actively shifted a portion of their operational infrastructure to Turkey to avoid detection by domestic law enforcement in their home country.

To avoid being traced, organizers set up empty shell companies that serve as front operations for the scam call centers, then hire local staff fluent in a wide range of target market languages, including Japanese, Hindi, French and Spanish. Employees are hired under specific roles labeled “conversion agents” and “retention agents”, each with a clear function in luring and manipulating victims. All new recruits undergo a one-week training program where they are assigned fake aliases and coached to build entirely false personal backstories designed to impress victims and build false credibility, including common claims that the agent is an elite graduate of Oxford University or another top international institution.

To protect the network from infiltration, organizers require all new hires to pass a polygraph test before starting work, designed to uncover any hidden connections to law enforcement or security agencies. Strict internal rules govern day-to-day operations: speaking Hebrew inside call center facilities is completely banned, and agents never identify the actual shell company they work for. Instead, they pose as representatives of fake investment platforms whose names are changed on a rotating basis by the Israeli organizers to evade tracking. One of the most strictly enforced rules, investigators found, is that the network never targets Israeli citizens for scams, limiting all fraudulent activity to victims outside of Israel.

In their assessment of the network’s structure, Turkish investigators found that transnational scam networks operated by Israeli fraudsters have cultivated what the syndicate describes as a mutually beneficial, “win-win” relationship with the state of Israel, though no further evidence or details of this relationship were provided in the official announcement.

A prominent children’s content creator has stepped forward to match a landmark $1 million donation from rapper Macklemore to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, issuing a public call for other high-profile, wealthy celebrities to use their platform and privilege to stand up for Palestinian children amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Rachel Griffin-Accurso, known widely to her young audience and their parents as Ms Rachel, announced her pledge in an Instagram post Thursday. The announcement came just days after Macklemore was dropped as an opening act from Ed Sheeran’s North American tour, a move the rapper says was orchestrated by New England Patriots owner and pro-Israeli businessman Robert Kraft, following Macklemore’s on-stage comments condemning Israeli military action in Gaza and declaring “Free Palestine.”

In her social media statement, Griffin-Accurso wrote: “I’ll match Macklemore’s donation and I invite every wealthy white celebrity to match it and speak out against the genocide in Gaza. Over 20,000 precious Palestinian children have been killed and children continue to be killed every day. We’ve a moral obligation to use our privilege and platforms to protect children and human rights.”

This is not the first time the children’s content creator has backed Palestinian relief efforts. Griffin-Accurso joined the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund as a global ambassador in 2025, building on months of prior fundraising work for the non-profit. Her prior advocacy includes highlighting the stories of conflict survivors on her digital platform, including a meeting with Rahaf, a young girl who survived Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, and she previously organized a 2024 fundraising drive through Save the Children to support children displaced and harmed by the ongoing war.

Shortly after Griffin-Accurso shared her pledge, Macklemore—born Benjamin Haggerty—publicly responded to her post with warm praise: “Wow. Love you so much.”

Macklemore first announced his own $1 million donation last week, committing all net proceeds from his sets on Sheeran’s tour to Palestinian support organizations. In his initial statement, the rapper wrote: “With everything that has happened over the last 48 hours, I want to bring the conversation back to where it belongs, to the Palestinian people who are still being killed, still living under military occupation, and still fighting for their freedom. Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protecting.”

Macklemore was removed from the tour line-up after his September 4 and 5 performances at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, where he openly addressed the war in Gaza, called for freedom for Palestine, and performed his protest track *Hind’s Hall*, named after the late four-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was killed by Israeli forces while trapped in a car with her extended family.

Following Macklemore’s removal, every remaining supporting act pulled out of the tour in a show of solidarity. Artists including Lukas Graham, Aaron Rowe, Finneas and Beoga all announced their departures from the tour schedule within an hour of one another on Tuesday.

This reporting was originally sourced from independent outlet Middle East Eye, which provides dedicated, unfiltered coverage of events across the Middle East and North Africa region.

Dust clinging to her clothes and exhaustion weighing on her shoulders, 13-year-old Heba Alataar completes the long walk from her displacement camp to a small makeshift tent in central Gaza’s al-Zawaida. What this tattered canvas structure lacks in infrastructure, it makes up for in hope: it is the new temporary home of classes run by the Right to Live Society (RLS), the only organization that long provided specialized support for children like Heba, who has Down syndrome.

Inside the tent, split crudely into two classrooms, Heba sits cross-legged on the bare ground alongside her peers—all children with Down syndrome—working slowly to reclaim skills they lost amid the violence and upheaval of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Heba is one of more than 1,000 children with Down syndrome in the besieged enclave, a group that has suffered disproportionately amid the wider humanitarian catastrophe that has unfolded across Gaza since October 2023.

Before the war, RLS was a lifeline for generations of these children and their families. Founded in 1993, the organization operated three purpose-built facilities across Gaza, employing 200 trained staff to deliver a full spectrum of care: early intervention support from birth, specialized education, physical rehabilitation, and mental health counseling for caregivers navigating the unique challenges of raising a child with Down syndrome. For Heba’s father Alaa Alattar, that support transformed his deepest fears into hope.

“When I first learned my daughter had Down syndrome, I cried for days. I had no understanding of her condition, no idea how to care for her, and I was terrified for what her future would hold,” Alattar told Middle East Eye. “All of that fear melted away when we joined RLS. We saw how the children were cared for, how much they could achieve, and we knew Heba would be okay.”

By age 10, Heba had mastered foundational skills: basic comprehension, clear speech, independent personal hygiene, and she was just beginning to learn to read and write. Alattar says he had started to imagine a full, meaningful future for his daughter—until Israeli attacks destroyed every RLS facility across Gaza in the months that followed the outbreak of war. Hundreds of children with disabilities were killed in the bombardment, and many more remain missing. The survivors were displaced, trapped in overcrowded camps with no access to the specialized care they depended on, and the trauma of constant violence erased years of slow, hard-won progress.

Watching Heba lose every skill she had gained was devastating for Alattar. “The war took everything from her. She lost all her skills, her interests, her daily routine. She went right back to square one, as if she had never received any care or education at all,” he said, his voice breaking. “There are no words to describe that heartbreak—years of my daughter’s hard work, the tireless effort of her teachers and our family, all gone in an instant. To see my little girl depressed, sitting alone in a displacement camp, that is a pain no parent should ever know.”

Other families share the same agony. Nabila Abed Rabbo says her 13-year-old daughter Saja, who also has Down syndrome, regressed completely after months of terror and displacement. “Every explosion left her terrified. She would cover her ears, scream, and cling to me, refusing to let me leave her side,” Abed Rabbo said. “Between the constant fear and the terrible conditions in the camp, Saja lost every basic skill she had. She couldn’t even use the toilet anymore, and diapers were almost impossible to get because of the blockade. We had no other options.”

Bahjat Sultan’s 14-year-old daughter Fatima has experienced similar regression. “The war changed her completely. She lost the ability to talk about her feelings, and she started having outbursts of aggressive behavior that we never saw before,” Sultan said. “At night, she can’t sleep. She wakes up screaming from nightmares, terrified all over again.”

Raoufa Salama, RLS’s director of rehabilitation programs, explains that the war’s impact on this vulnerable group has been catastrophic. Beyond the widespread loss of skills in communication, self-care, and social interaction, the organization has recorded a sharp, unexpected rise in new cases of Down syndrome births. Before the war, RLS saw one to two new cases a week; today, that number has jumped to four to five. Salama attributes this increase to widespread exposure to toxic pollution from Israeli explosives and the chronic extreme psychological stress that all pregnant people in Gaza now endure.

Amid all the loss, fragments of hope remain. Fatima Sultan has carried her old RLS uniform with her through every round of displacement, refusing to leave it behind. “She puts it on all the time and asks me to take her back to the center,” her father said. “I just promise her we’ll go soon, and I hold on to the hope that one day we will.”

In July 2024, the surviving RLS team began the slow work of rebuilding their services from scratch. Working out of makeshift tents across three locations in Gaza, the team restarted programming with recreational activities and home visits, eventually expanding back to early intervention, specialized education, and rehabilitation. Their core goals: support families through trauma, help children regain lost skills, and raise awareness of the unique risks disabled children face amid ongoing war and displacement.

For families who had been turned away from every other school because of their children’s condition, the return of RLS brought overwhelming joy. “I tried to enroll Saja in so many different schools, and they all rejected her because of her disability,” Abed Rabbo said. “When we got the invitation from RLS, she was so happy she could finally go to her own school, learn, and make friends.”

Today, RLS serves more than 1,000 children with Down syndrome and autism across its three tent sites. But the obstacles remain nearly insurmountable. The 16-year blockade of Gaza and widespread destruction have left the organization facing crippling shortages of every essential: no proper classroom space, no specialized educational equipment, no consistent access to medical supplies. Teachers improvise, cutting educational materials from cardboard left over from aid packages and scavenging bits of colored paper to make learning tools.

The biggest threat, however, remains ongoing violence. Even after a ceasefire was announced in October 2023, Israel continues to carry out near-daily attacks across Gaza, and maintains a near-total blockade on most aid. Since the ceasefire took effect, Israeli forces have killed at least 1,386 Palestinians, including 300 children. Fourteen-year-old RLS student Ahmed Al-Mabhouh was shot five times by an Israeli soldier while playing near his home east of Al-Bureij refugee camp, leaving him severely wounded and unable to attend classes. Each new round of violence and displacement can erase weeks of progress, sending children back into the trauma that erased their skills in the first place.

Still, against all odds, the children and their families are pushing forward. Slowly but steadily, they are regaining lost skills, rebuilding routines, and reclaiming their joy. For Heba, the center has already transformed her life. “Learning is her whole new routine now. It takes up most of her day, and she’s always so excited to go to class,” Alattar said. “She comes home and tells us all about her friends and what she learned. She’s happier, more focused, and we are so grateful for everything the RLS team has done for us.”

Watching his daughter progress again has restored Alattar’s hope for the future—even as he waits for the war to end for good. “I hope that the fighting stops completely, that our children never have to fear air strikes or being forced to run from their homes again,” he said. “I hope Heba gets a safe, proper place to learn, that she can fully recover, thrive, and one day achieve our shared dream: she wants to be a teacher for other children with Down syndrome.”