BENGALURU: The Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Bengaluru zonal office, has provisionally attached movable properties -- balance in foreign bank accounts, in USA and Singapore, worth around Rs 505 crore, held in the names of overseas shell companies of Winzo Pvt Ltd, Winzo US Inc, USA, and Winzo SG Pte. Ltd, Singapore, operated and controlled by Paavan Nanda and Saumya Singh Rathore.
On November 18, the ED raided the premises of Winzo Pvt Ltd, and the house of its director and his accounting firm on December 30. "The proceeds and subsequent investigation revealed that the company was engaged in criminal activities in which customers were made to play with bots/AI/algorithms/software (PPP/EP/Persona) without being made aware of the fact that they are playing with them and not humans in real money games," the ED said on Wednesday.
"Winzo has also prevented/limited withdrawal of monies held by the customers in the wallets of Winzo Pvt Ltd. The company also generated proceeds of crime (PoC) in the form of 'rake commission' from the matches played by the bots with real players on their Winzo app," added the central agency.
ED said that by using bots and a restrictive environment in withdrawing funds, the users were induced to play more matches. "Users' deposited amounts were progressively appropriated by the company in the form of rake commission charged on each match. The cumulative effect of this mechanism enabled the company to systematically convert users' deposits into revenue. The total PoC derived by the company amounted to Rs 3522.05 crore for the financial years 2021-22 to 2025-26 (till August 22, 2025)," stated the ED.
So far, ED has frozen movable properties of around Rs 689 crore in the instant case.