https://stg-www.hindustantimes.com/cities/mumbai-news/parimatch-used-500-mule-bank-accounts-to-collect-route-funds-ed-probe-101758482664002.html

MUMBAI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has found that Cyprus-based betting platform Parimatch — accused of siphoning roughly ₹3,000 crore from Indian users by luring them with promises of high returns — operated an elaborate money-laundering network that relied on some 500 mule bank accounts to collect, route and conceal end beneficiaries, officials said.

The agency is now scrutinising transactions routed through those mule accounts as part of a wider probe that sprang from a complaint by the cyber police station in Mumbai. During searches on August 12, the ED froze about ₹110 crore found across multiple bank accounts used as mule accounts or to divert funds. The funds have been treated as proceeds of crime, officials said.

A mule account is a bank account opened or used by a person or entity to transfer or receive illicit funds on behalf of others, often for a fee.

Searches at 17 locations — including Mumbai, Surat, Delhi, Noida, Kanpur, Madurai and Hyderabad — yielded incriminating documents and digital devices, according to the ED. Investigators say the frozen balances were part of a layering process —money was parked in mule accounts, moved to other recipients, and masked to hide its origin.

The platform, which the ED says is owned by a Ukrainian national residing abroad, allegedly collected about ₹3,000 crore from Indian users before defaulting on payouts. The probe has uncovered a multi-layered laundering operation, officials added.

In south India, deposits were reportedly channelled into mule accounts, withdrawn in cash across parts of Tamil Nadu and then handed to hawala operators. The hawala operators are alleged to have recharged virtual wallets of a UK-based firm; those wallets were then used to buy USDT cryptocurrency in mule accounts run by Parimatch agents.

In western India, the ED said, Parimatch made use of Domestic Money Transfer agents to collect betting funds into mule accounts and pushed the monies back into the financial system via credit-card transactions.

Investigators have also flagged several payment companies whose Payment Aggregator licence applications were rejected by the Reserve Bank of India. The firms allegedly acted as backend service providers to Parimatch — posing as Technology Service Providers (TSPs) and offering API access to integrate mule accounts (often opened in the names of e-commerce and payment firms) with the platform. Once inside the system, funds were frequently disguised as e-commerce refunds, vendor payments and routine expenses to obscure their true origin and movement.

In order to build a customer base, Parimatch is alleged to have invested heavily in marketing — sponsoring events and signing up celebrities. The ED says Indian-registered entities were used for surrogate advertising, funded through foreign remittances, to give the operation a veneer of legitimacy and to funnel users to the offshore betting sites.