ED Raids 17 Cities, Freezes Rs 110 Crore In Rs 3,000-Crore Parimatch Online Betting Probe

ED Investigates I Parimatch: The Directorate of Enforcement's (ED's) Mumbai Zonal Office conducted an investigation under at 17 locations including Mumbai, Delhi, and Noida as part of an ongoing probe against Cyprus-based illegal online betting platform Parimatch.

The search operations were also launched in Jaipur, Surat, Madurai, Kanpur and Hyderabad under the Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, according to ED.

Under the course of this ongoing probe, funds aggregating to approximately Rs 110 crore in various bank accounts belonging to persons / entities used as mule accounts and/or for layering purposes, were frozen, it said.

Several various incriminating documents, digital devices have been found and seized during the search proceedings, it added.

"ED initiated investigation on the basis of FIR registered by Cyber PS, Mumbai against Parimatch.com for duping users through online betting platform Parimatch. They defrauded investors luring them with high returns, generating over Rs 3,000 crore in a year as gathered from the investigation till date," the economic intellegence agency said.

Also Read: How Ending Ukraine War Could Ease US Tariffs And Benefit India

Parimatch Dupes Users Pan-India With These Strategies

Searches revealed that Parimatch routed users’ funds through mule accounts using different strategies across the country. In one case, funds deposited by users into mule accounts were withdrawn in cash in a specific locality in Tamil Nadu, according to the Directorate of Enforcement.

This cash was handed over to hawala operators, who used it to recharge virtual wallets of a UK-based company, it said.

These wallets were then used to buy USDT cryptocurrency in the name of mule crypto accounts, which were actually operated by Parimatch agents.

In western India, Parimatch engaged services of domestic money transfer (DMT) agents. Funds collected in mule accounts controlled by these DMT agents were sent to PariMatch agents through payments made by mule Credit Cards. A total of more than 1,200 such credit cards were found and seized from a single premise, ED said.

“ED investigation also uncovered that payment companies whose applications for Payment Aggregator licenses were rejected by the RBI, offered their services to Parimatch in garb of technology service providers (TSPs) and offered their API (Application Programming Interface) to facilitate user fund collections,"it said. 

These TSPs offered the APIs to Parimatch agents who onboarded mule accounts opened in the name of e-commerce companies and payment solution provider companies for collection of funds from users.

The money so collected through UPI transfers was layered and transferred out in the garb of e-commerce refunds, chargebacks, vendor payments, etc. effectively concealing the actual flow and purpose of funds. The investigation continues to be underway.