Greece files criminal complaints against 18 Instagram influencers over the alleged promotion of illegal gambling sites

Greece's gambling regulator has filed criminal complaints against 18 Instagram influencers it accuses of promoting illegal gambling sites. The accounts have a combined 3.6 million followers, and the largest has about 623,000. Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Minister of National Economy and Finance, announced the complaints on 6 October 2026 during a briefing at the Hellenic Gaming Commission (EEEP) on how Greece's new illegal-gambling law is being enforced. The cases are at the preliminary-investigation stage: no court has ruled on them, nobody has been convicted, and the influencers have not been named officially.

What the regulator alleges

According to EEEP figures reported by in.gr, the 18 accounts promoted 11 unlicensed gambling websites and eight unlicensed gambling providers. Antonios Alexiou, EEEP's deputy director-general, said the illegal market is following audiences onto social media and uses people with large online followings to look more trustworthy and reach more players. EEEP filed its complaint with the public prosecutor at the Athens Court of First Instance.

The 3.6 million is a sum across the 18 accounts, not a count of individual people: anyone who follows several of them is counted more than once.

What the June law changed

Law 5313/2026, published in Greece's Government Gazette on 25 June 2026, strengthened EEEP. Gaming inspectors now have special investigative powers, the regulator gets 110 permanent posts (40 of them for specialist staff), and it can impose administrative fines straight away for illegal online promotion: up to €50,000 per violation.

Those administrative fines are a separate track from the criminal complaints against the 18; no fines against them have been announced.

How big the illegal market is

Pierrakakis gave three figures for 2025: about €1.8 billion was gambled on the illegal market, about 900,000 people took part in illegal gambling, and about 15,000 websites were on the regulator's blacklist. Blocking is done with the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT) and internet providers, and EEEP is using AI tools to map illegal networks and the channels that promote them.

"The internet is not a jungle," Pierrakakis said. "Popularity offers no immunity, and influence carries responsibility." (Translated from Greek.) He added that illegal activity taking place online creates no "grey zone", that a site based outside Greece does not mean it is tolerated, and that promoting it through social media does not free anyone from responsibility.

AI is also being used for player protection. Alexiou said a pilot running since early September covers more than 200,000 online players. It uses GameScanner, a system from the Danish company Mindway AI, to look for early signs of problem gambling in anonymised play data, and is due to finish by the end of the year.

What it means for players

Most enforcement goes after the sites. This case goes after people accused of sending players to them. For players, the practical point is simple: a casino link from a popular account says nothing about whether the site is licensed. In Greece, an unlicensed site can be blocked at any time, and money sitting in an account there has no Greek regulator behind it if something goes wrong. Check the licence before you sign up, not the follower count.

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