BENGALURU: The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) arrested three founders of an online real-money gaming platform for allegedly cheating, fraud, and other offences.
ED registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against Gamezkraft Technologies Ltd and its associated entities based on multiple FIRs alleging cheating, fraud, and other offences against the company and its founders, who operated online real-money gaming platforms such as RummyCulture and the RummyTime apps. Several FIRs registered against the company are also linked to alleged suicides by victims of the online gaming platform scams.
On May 7, the ED conducted searches at 17 locations across Karnataka and the National Capital Region (NCR) linked to Gamezkraft group companies, their founders, and employees. Officials seized several incriminating documents.
The ED discovered that the founders of the Gamezkraft group prima facie guilty of money laundering offences, leading to the arrest of the three founders Deepak Singh, Prithvi Raj Singh, and Vikas Taneja under Section 19 of the PMLA on Friday.
Deepak Singh and Prithvi Raj Singh were arrested in the NCR region, following which the ED obtained transit remand to produce them before a Bengaluru court. Vikas Taneja was arrested in Bengaluru and was produced before the jurisdictional court.
Sriki, two others arrested in Bitcoin scam case
Bengaluru: The sleuths of ED on Friday arrested Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki and two others in connection with the Bitcoin scam and took them into custody for 10 days. On April 20, the central agency carried out raids at 12 locations, including premises allegedly linked to Sriki, Congress youth leader Mohammed Nalapad, and a relative of ex-union minister Rahman Khan. The agency was probing the alleged Bitcoin scam for several years over accusations of illegal cryptocurrency transactions, hacking, and financial irregularities. Sriki was earlier arrested in the Bitcoin case and was out on bail. The arrested are Srikrishna Ramesh, Robin Khandelwal, and Sunish Hegde. The trio was produced before a special ED court judge on Saturday.