India’s financial crime fighting agency has frozen over US$1.5 million in cryptocurrencies as part of a money laundering investigation against mobile gaming application E-nuggets, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Wednesday.

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Fast facts

• The ED launched a money laundering investigation against E-Nuggets founder Aamir Khan “and others,” after authorities in the eastern city of Kolkata filed a complaint against the suspects in February last year.

• E-Nuggets was allegedly designed to defraud the general public, the ED said.

• The app allegedly disabled withdrawals after collecting a significant amount of money from users and all data were erased from the app servers.

• The ED said its investigation revealed that the accused transferred some illegal profits from the gaming app to overseas accounts.

• The accused used a dummy account to purchase crypto on Indian exchange WazirX before transferring the assets to Binance exchange, the agency said.

• Earlier this month, an ED-led raid at Khan’s residence led to the recovery of about US$2.1 million.

See related article: India crypto traders try to dodge fallout from WazirX woes, spat with Binance