MUMBAI, Aug. 15 -- The Mumbai unit of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has frozen Rs.110 crore lying in mule bank accounts in connection with a money-laundering probe into Cyprus-based illegal betting platform Parimatch. The action followed coordinated searches at 17 locations across the country on Tuesday, including Mumbai, Surat, Delhi, Noida, Kanpur, Madurai and Hyderabad. The platform, owned by a Ukrainian national abroad, allegedly amassed nearly Rs.3,000 crore from Indian users in 2023-24 alone, luring them with promises of high returns before defrauding them, ED officials said on Thursday. According to investigators, the frozen funds-proceeds of crime-were parked in multiple mule accounts used to layer and divert money to various recipients. Searches also led to the seizure of incriminating documents, digital devices and 1,200 credit cards linked to mule accounts. The ED's probe, based on a complaint by the cyber police station in Mumbai, has uncovered a multi-layered laundering operation. In south India, user deposits were allegedly funnelled into mule accounts and withdrawn in cash in parts of Tamil Nadu, before being handed to hawala operators. These operators then recharged virtual wallets of a UK-based firm, which were used to buy USDT cryptocurrency in mule accounts run by Parimatch agents. In western India, Parimatch allegedly used Domestic Money Transfer agents to collect betting funds in mule accounts and channel them back through credit card transactions. Investigators have also flagged payment companies whose Payment Aggregator licence applications were rejected by the Reserve Bank of India. These firms allegedly provided backend services to Parimatch disguised as Technology Service Providers (TSPs), offering Application Programming Interface (API) access to integrate mule accounts-often opened in the names of e-commerce and payment service firms-into the platform. The funds were then "masked" as e-commerce refunds, officials said....