ED Freezes ₹110 Crore in Multi-City Crackdown on Illegal Betting Platform

August 14, 2025

Mumbai: In a sweeping multi-city crackdown against a Cyprus-based illegal online betting platform, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has frozen ₹110 crore parked in mule bank accounts linked to a ₹3,000 crore fraud, officials 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.

Investigation Triggered by Investor Complaints

The ED began its probe following an FIR registered by the Cyber Police Station, Mumbai, alleging that Parimatch.com defrauded investors by promising high returns and generating over ₹3,000 crore in a single year.
The investigation also revealed that payment companies, whose Payment Aggregator license applications were rejected by the RBI, disguised themselves as technology service providers (TSPs) and offered their APIs to Parimatch to facilitate fund collections from users.

Nationwide Searches and Evidence Seizure

During searches conducted on Tuesday under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, ED officers raided 17 locations across Mumbai, Delhi, Noida, Jaipur, Surat, Madurai, Kanpur, and Hyderabad.
Incriminating documents and digital devices were seized from the premises, the agency said.

Aggressive Marketing and Surrogate Advertising

The probe found that Parimatch boosted its presence in India through sports sponsorships, celebrity partnerships, and surrogate advertisements.
Two Indian entities — Parimatch Sports and Parimatch News — were used to run ads, funded through foreign inward remittances.

Complex Hawala and Crypto Route

ED officials discovered that Parimatch routed user funds through mule accounts across the country. In one instance, deposits into mule accounts were withdrawn in cash in Tamil Nadu and handed to hawala operators.
These operators then recharged virtual wallets of a UK-based company, which were used to purchase USDT cryptocurrency via mule crypto accounts managed by Parimatch agents.