He let an AI read too many court auction listings. Now he is in a Turkish jail

A Turkish computer engineer, İlker Çatak, used Claude to help build a program that scanned listings on the Justice Ministry’s court-auction portal each night, hoping to identify properties to buy. He logged in under his own name, and investigators later found his account had opened every auction record they examined. The investigation concerns a real scam in which auction winners receive calls from fake tax officials demanding VAT and stamp duty. The portal made the scam easier: registered users could see each winner’s name, property and purchase price. Prosecutors suspect an organized group and, according to Çatak’s lawyers, appear to have treated the person who viewed the most records as the group’s technical operator. Çatak has been detained since October 13.

The author, a friend of Çatak and a suspect in the same investigation, argues that the detention rests on the volume of records accessed rather than evidence linking him to the fraudulent calls. Prosecutors cited his engineering skills, devices that might be remotely erased, access to a cloud server, and the view that scanning listings nationwide was “contrary to the ordinary course of life.” On November 11, a judge extended his detention, citing strong suspicion and the seriousness of the charge, without identifying specific evidence against him. The author also used Claude to investigate how scammers found victims; the ministry’s IT directorate said it had begun work to mask auction winners’ names. The case, the author warns, shows how ordinary use of automation can be interpreted as suspicious when investigators do not understand it.