BENGALURU: The Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Bengaluru zonal office, on September 2 carried out search operations at multiple premises in Bengaluru and Challakere under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, in the alleged illegal online betting case involving Chitradurga Congress MLA KC Veerendra Puppy and others. In an official release on Wednesday, the ED stated that it had seized “five high-end vehicles, including Mercedes Benz with VIP numbers 0003 (KA 50 MB 0003, KA 09 ML 0003, KA 53 MD 0003, KA 53 MH 0003, KA 16 P 0003) and one with VIP number 5267 (KA 02 MU 5267)”.
“Further, an amount of around Rs 55 crore was frozen, including around Rs 40.69 crore in nine bank accounts, and one demat account of Veerendra. Around Rs 14.46 crore in 262 mule accounts was recovered from one of the accused gateways through which money collected by multiple gaming websites, allegedly operated by Veerendra and his associates, was being routed,” the central agency stated.
It added that the “searches and tracing of proceeds of crime (PoC) were undertaken during the ED’s custody of the prime accused, MLA, Chitradurga district, KC Veerendra”.
The ED stated that on August 28, the agency had sought “extension of Veerendra’s custody for an additional seven days on the basis of documentary evidence linking him to generation and laundering of PoC in the case (ECIR/BGZO/19/2025). The ECIR was earlier recorded against him and others in cheating the public in illegal online betting cases”.
Earlier, the ED had conducted searches across 31 premises in Challakere, Bengaluru, Panaji, Gangtok, Jodhpur, Hubballi and Mumbai, and seized Rs 12crore in cash, gold jewellery worth Rs 6crore, around 10kg of silver articles and four vehicles. Several gateways have been used for routing payments collected through these websites”.
The money collected in a short span of time from websites operated by Veerendra and his associates through a single gateway alone is more than Rs 2,000 crore. His brother, KC Thippeswamy, operates three business entities -- Diamond Softech, TRS Technologies and Prime9Technologies -- from Dubai.
These are related to call centre services and Veerendra’s gaming businesses. It is suspected that many more such Dubai-based entities such as ‘Castle Rock Project Management Services’ and ‘Lascaux Core Project Management Services’ have been incorporated by Veerendra in partnership with Thippeswamy, Pruthvi N Raj, Anil Gowda and others.
The agency said the mule accounts are provided by various middlemen to the operators of these gaming websites, in this case, Appu alias Pruthvi (nephew of Veerendra), who in turn uses them to collect funds received from various players. These funds are further siphoned off through hawala transactions.