MUMBAI, Sept. 22 -- The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has found that Cyprus-based betting platform Parimatch - accused of siphoning roughly Rs.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 Rs.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 Rs.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 In south India, deposits were reportedly channelled into mule accounts, withdrawn in cash across parts of Tamil Nadu and then handed to hawala operators.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....