Searches tied to an inquiry into suspected online betting through All Panel Exchange (APX) and connected cyber-fraud activity have resulted in the Enforcement Directorate placing a freeze on bank accounts and assets valued at over Rs 15 crore across several locations.
Across five locations on 13 October — Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Surat, and the Gujarat town of Unjha — inquiry teams examined bank records tied to suspected proxy holders, fintech platforms, shell structures, and cryptocurrency trails that authorities allege were used to move funds derived from betting activity. A car was among the assets seized by the agency during operations in Pune.
Enforcement actions by the ED extended across four cities, with 23 accounts restrained in Mumbai, 17 in Pune, 16 in Surat, and 19 in Unjha, Gujarat, bringing the combined count to 75 frozen accounts in all.
Three financial entities — Pune-registered Edsom Fintech Pvt Ltd, Pune's Muslim Cooperative Bank, and Bengaluru's Nagarbhavi Credit Cooperative Society — have come under scrutiny from the agency as part of the money-laundering probe, with investigators examining whether each played a part in channelling funds tied to the APX betting network. Edsom Fintech is said to have put in place financial and technical arrangements with MCB and NCCS that routed betting-linked funds through Pay-In and Pay-Out channels, with those transactions recorded as ordinary merchant payments, according to the ED.
Investigators at the Enforcement Directorate followed a money trail of around Rs 150 crore that had reportedly passed through a single pooled account held at MCB, with Pay-In and Pay-Out merchant facilities serving as the conduit. Investigators believe the funds flowing from betting activity may have been routed through that arrangement to obscure their original source.
Investigators traced a separate flow of funds — approximately Rs 37 crore tied to NCCS — that allegedly passed through a shell account before being converted into digital currency, among them USDT (Tether), and then moved to destinations outside the country. Funds totalling around Rs 6.5 crore passed through a personal account tied to the same network in a distinct transaction chain, with that money likewise exchanged for USDT before being transferred overseas.
Audit trails led back to Rs 182 crore in cash withdrawals routed through shell accounts connected to the Agricultural Produce Market Committee network, with the movement of those funds pointing to how rural financial infrastructure had been repurposed to obscure money generated by illegal online betting operations, according to investigators. The agency stated that funds tied to betting activity were channelled by Edsom Fintech into accounts connected to APMCs, where cash withdrawals then fed movement across a wider financial network.
During coordinated raids spanning multiple cities, investigators traced and placed freezing orders on a number of bank accounts believed to have been part of the scheme.
Edsom Fintech sits at the centre of an Enforcement Directorate investigation whose total financial scope has been placed at Rs 958 crore, of which Rs 341.66 crore relates to funds that passed through payment gateways — with the payment-gateway transactions forming one part of that wider case. Money the agency attributed to online gambling operations and related cyber-fraud activity is thought to have moved through a series of intermediary accounts before reaching the fintech firm and its associated businesses. Tracing the path those funds took, investigators are working to map out the full chain of transactions and determine what part each entity played.
Edsom Fintech's founder and chief executive, Ram U. Ramdhani, had been taken into custody on 28 September under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act as part of the same probe. Placed under seven days of Enforcement Directorate detention by order of a Mumbai special court, he was later transferred to judicial custody.
Investigators carrying out the Mumbai portion of the operation directed their attention toward the S.B. group. Investigators from the enforcement agency found that a number of entities registered under the conglomerate's structure had been functioning as fictitious fronts with no substantive business operations. Investigators determined that 23 bank accounts tied to the companies had been frozen, with findings pointing to those entities having been deployed to establish and manage mule accounts — channelling funds through banking and payment infrastructure connected to APX betting operations while presenting the activity as ordinary commercial dealings. Evidence gathered during the raids pointed to what investigators believe was a structured process of moving money through those entities, with the funds then reportedly converted into digital currency before being routed abroad.
Investigators from the ED also carried out searches at two diamond trading firms in Surat, both under scrutiny over purchases of lower-quality stones recorded at artificially elevated prices — a practice authorities believe formed part of a broader channel for routing offshore funds tied to the APX betting network back into India. Sixteen bank accounts held in Surat had their funds placed under a freeze by the ED when its teams conducted the searches there.
