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ED found Rs 331.36 crore flowed through a bike-taxi driver’s account linked to 1xBet, funding a Udaipur wedding, as part of a major money laundering probe.
Investigators believe the use of a third-party account may have been an attempt to hide the real source of the money
Amid the probe into the illegal betting-linked money laundering, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has uncovered transactions worth Rs 331.36 crore flowing through the bank account of a bike-taxi driver in New Delhi — a man who earns barely Rs 500–600 a day and lives in a two-room shanty.
Officials said the discovery came while tracking suspicious money movements linked to the 1xBet online betting network, triggering a raid at the modest address listed in the driver’s bank records.
Investigators soon realised they had stumbled upon a classic “mule account”, used by laundering networks to funnel illicit funds through unsuspecting or vulnerable individuals using fake or rented KYC details, news agency PTI reported.
Investigators believe the use of a third-party account may have been an attempt to hide the real source of the money and avoid scrutiny.
It was found that the driver’s bank account received deposits worth Rs 331.36 crore between August 19, 2024, and April 16, 2025, the officials said. Alarmed by the “suspicious” multi-crore-rupee transactions in a short period of eight months, the federal agency conducted a raid at the address provided in the driver’s bank records.
What they found was far from the profile of someone moving multi-crore sums. The driver lived in a two-room shanty in a modest locality and spent most of his day on the roads, earning just enough to run his household.
During questioning, he claimed he had no knowledge of the deposits or the beneficiaries.
What stunned investigators further was the revelation that over Rs 1 crore from the same account had been used to pay for a luxury destination wedding hosted at a five-star property in Udaipur in November 2024. Payments were allegedly made for décor, fleet services, room bookings and event management, despite the driver having no connection to the families involved. Yet several major bills were allegedly cleared from his account.
The wedding, ED officials said, is linked to a young Gujarat politician, who is now likely to be summoned for questioning.
According to investigators, the bank account saw large deposits from multiple unidentified sources, which were then “swiftly layered” and transferred to other suspicious accounts — a pattern consistent with illegal betting syndicates. One of the fund sources has already been traced directly to betting operations under the 1xBet umbrella.
The ED is now examining who actually operated the account, whether the driver was coerced or compensated, and how such massive sums were routed without raising internal banking alarms.
The agency had recently attached assets worth crores of rupees of former cricketers Shikhar Dhawan and Suresh Raina as part of the 1xbet probe, even as it questioned a number of other cricketers and celebrities.
(With inputs from PTI)
Shobhit Gupta is a sub-editor at News18.com and covers India and International news. He is interested in day to day political affairs in India and geopolitics. He earned his BA Journalism (Hons) degree from Ben…Read More
Shobhit Gupta is a sub-editor at News18.com and covers India and International news. He is interested in day to day political affairs in India and geopolitics. He earned his BA Journalism (Hons) degree from Ben… Read More
November 29, 2025, 09:46 IST
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