The Enforcement Directorate unveiled a stunning case of mule accounts and fraud after linking a betting-linked money laundering scheme to a bank account belonging to a Rapido driver.
Officials who were initially investigating transactions linked to the 1xBet betting network found that it led to a bike-taxi driver in Delhi. They found unexplainable amounts of deposits - Rs 331.36 crore - coming into the bank account over eight months from August 19 2024, to April 16 2025.
They also found that more than 1 crore from the account was allegedly spent on a lavish wedding in Udaipur's Taj Aravalli Resort, for a bride and groom that had zero connections to the driver in November last year. The wedding was linked to a young Gujarati political figure Aditya Zula, who may be summoned for questioning.
The deposit triggered suspicion and prompted the ED to raid the address belonging to the man who owned the account.
They found that the driver, lived in a two-room apartment in a modest locality and continued to work on the roads to earn his living.
The agency suspects that the driver's account was a mule, which is a bank account operated by money laundering networks.
Multiple unidentified sources recived funds from the acount, and the funds were quickly transferred to other suspicious accounts. The ED is also verifying the entire chain of events and recipients. The agency also recently found that the assests worth crores belonging to former cricketers Shikhar Dhawan and Suresh Raina were linked to the 1xBet case. Several celebrities were also questioned as part of the investigation.