BENGALURU: The investigation by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has revealed that Sunish Hegde, a city-based businessman, extorted money in crores from the victims of notorious hacker Srikrishna aka Sriki and received proceeds of crime in cash, bank transfers and casino chips since 2017.
Sriki told ED that he hacked poker websites, including PokerSaint, and Hegde used the hacked database for his poker business and made around Rs 6 crore. Sriki revealed that he hacked the Pokerbaazi website at the behest of Hegde, who then went to the owners of Pokerbaazi claiming to help fix the website. Hegde was paid Rs 2 crore for the fix. Sriki told ED that it was clearly “an extortion game”. Robin Khandelwala, the main conduit for layering proceeds of crime, too admitted it.
The Pokerbaazi owner had given cash and Rs 20 lakh worth of casino chips to Hegde. Sriki and his other associates used the chips to play in the offshore casino of Pokerbaazi. Another case registered at the Ashok Nagar police station reveals that Rs 28 lakh was routed to Hegde.
The forensic audit by the CID, which was accessed by ED, revealed that Rs 20 lakh was routed by Khandelwal to the bank account of Delta Corp Ltd, which runs a casino in Goa and the said amount was credited into Hegde’s account, who used it for gambling.
During a search at Hegde’s house in April 2026 prior to his recent arrest by ED, Rs 9.25 lakh cash and a mobile phone were seized. The search revealed that Hegde used a Binance Deposit Wallet and over 1 lakh USDT, which is a stablecoin, was received and transferred into a Binance account.
Hegde told ED that he never opened any cryptocurrency account and neither is he holding any cryptocurrency. However, no plausible source for virtual digital assets (VDAs) transacted through Binance trading account has been provided by Hegde to ED. Hegde said he had invested in USD crypto trading platform called Blofin. However, his reply to the ED with regard to his involvement in VDAs is contradictory to the evidence seized.
Hegde, named in multiple FIRs registered by the state police wherein charge sheets are pending, is a major beneficiary of proceeds of crime, which was also paid for luxury hotel bills and expenses of Sriki.
ED to grill Sunish for collecting drugs at a foreign post office
Sunish Hegde is an accused in another case registered over using proceeds of crime or VDAs to purchase banned narcotics from foreign countries through dark web. The ED’s probe disclosed that this is not a one-off instance of stolen VDAs being used to purchase banned narcotics by the accused.
Hegde and his three associates had gone to collect the drug ordered from the USA at the foreign post office in Cottonpet along with his three associates. Investigation revealed that Rs 1,000 through UPI and Rs 10,000 in cash was paid by Hegde’s close associate to an employee at the post office to collect the parcel containing the drug, which was addressed to a fake address and fake name.
