Overview

• On August 12 the ED executed Prevention of Money Laundering Act searches at 17 locations across eight cities, freezing ₹110 crore in mule bank accounts and seizing more than 1,200 mule credit cards.
• Investigators mapped a multilayer laundering chain in which user deposits were withdrawn as cash in Tamil Nadu, handed to hawala operators, moved into UK virtual wallets and converted into USDT via mule crypto accounts.
• The probe found that firms rejected as payment aggregators by the RBI posed as technology service providers and supplied APIs to integrate mule accounts under the cover of e-commerce refunds and chargebacks.
• Parimatch deployed aggressive marketing with celebrity endorsements and surrogate advertisements through Indian entities Parimatch Sports and Parimatch News to lure users.
• The ED said the investigation remains active with further forensic scrutiny of seized materials and cross-border asset tracing to follow the money trail.