Mumbai, Aug 14 In a multi-city crackdown against a Cyprus-based illegal online betting platform, the ED has frozen Rs 110 crore parked in mule bank accounts as part of a Rs 3,000 crore fraud, an official said on Thursday.
Cricket stars Sunil Narine and Nicholas Pooran, a Bollywood actress and an Indian rap star were among the brand ambassadors of the platform Parimatch.
The ED initiated an investigation on the basis of an FIR registered by the Cyber Police Station, Mumbai, against Parimatch.com on complaints that it defrauded investors by luring them with high returns, generating over Rs 3,000 crore in a year.
The probe also uncovered that payment companies whose applications for Payment Aggregator licenses were rejected by the RBI, offered their services to Parimatch in the garb of technology service providers (TSPs) and offered their API (Application Programming Interface) to facilitate user fund collections, said an ED statement.
During the multicity searches, the Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Mumbai Zonal Office, seized incriminating documents and digital devices on Tuesday under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 from 17 locations in Mumbai, Delhi, Noida, Jaipur, Surat, Madurai, Kanpur and Hyderabad.
The probe against Parimatch revealed that the platform gained visibility through aggressive marketing, including sponsorship of sports tournaments and partnerships with well-known celebrities
The ED said the platform also set up Indian entities to run surrogate advertisements under the names "Parimatch Sports" and "Parimatch News". Payments to these agencies were made via foreign inward remittances.
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In one case, funds deposited by users into mule accounts were withdrawn in cash in a specific locality in Tamil Nadu. This cash was handed over to hawala operators, who used it to recharge virtual wallets of a UK-based company.
These wallets were then used to buy USDT cryptocurrency in the name of mule crypto accounts, operated by Parimatch agents.
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