₹110 cr parked in mule accounts and 1,200 benami credit cards seized in Parimatch PMLA case

The ED charged that Parmatch also routed users’ fund through mule accounts using different strategies across the country
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Continuing with its crackdown, the Enforcement Directorate seized funds worth ₹110 crore parked in mule bank accounts and 1,200 mule credit cards following recent searches against the Indian operations of a Cyprus-based illegal online betting app, ‘Parimatch’.

Parimatch app, which has been under scrutiny by the federal probe agency, gained traction in the country through a business strategy that involved “aggressive” marketing by way offering sponsorship of sports tournaments and entering into partnerships with well-known celebrities.

They allegedly cheated investors luring them with high returns and are suspected to have generated more than ₹3,000 crore in a year.

“They 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,” the ED said in a statement on Thursday.

On August 12, the agency carried out searches at 17 locations in Mumbai, Noida, Jaipur, Surat, Madurai, Kanpur and Hyderabad after registering a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to probe alleged swindling of public money by Parimatch. The case was originally registered by the Mumbai police.

According to the ED, funds worth about ₹110 crore were parked in various bank accounts held by persons/entities used as mule accounts, which are essentially benami accounts used for money laundering and similar criminal activities, and for “layering” purposes were frozen for investigation.

Similarly, more than 1,200 mule credit cards, found at a single premise during the searches, too have been seized, the agency stated.

The ED charged that Parmatch also routed users’ fund through mule accounts using different strategies across the country.

Modus operandi

Agency sources, describing the modus operandi, stated that in one instance alone, funds deposited by users into mule accounts were withdrawn in cash in Tamil Nadu. Subsequently, the cash was handed over to hawala operators for recharging virtual wallets of a UK-based company.

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

In western India, the ED said, 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.

The ED said it found that payment companies whose application for payment aggregator licences 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.

“These TSPs offered the API 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 ED probe found.

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, it said.

Published on August 14, 2025

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