India's Enforcement Directorate Freezes $2.5M More Crypto in Gaming App E-Nuggets Case

The total value of frozen or seized assets in the case is about $8.4 million.

Nov 11, 2022 at 11:09 a.m. UTC

Updated Nov 11, 2022 at 3:28 p.m. UTC

Amitoj Singh is CoinDesk's regulatory reporter covering India. He holds BTC and ETH below CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000.

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India's Enforcement Directorate (ED) asked crypto exchange Binance to freeze 150.22 bitcoins, today valued at about $2.5 million, as part of a money-laundering investigation relating to a gaming app called E-Nuggets, according to a press release on Friday.

The total value of frozen or seized assets in the case now amounts to $8.4 million the ED said.

The investigation relates to a February 2021 complaint filed by regulators in India's eastern city of Kolkata against Aamir Khan, the app's creator, and others. The agency alleges that Khan and others launched E-Nuggets to collect money from the public in return for rewards on commissions, but later wiped out all data. Khan's contact information has not been known since the investigation began.

The ED said "multiple accounts (more than 300) were used to launder the money" and that Khan transferred some of the money overseas through a cryptocurrency exchange. As many as 77.6 bitcoins, worth roughly $1.5 million at the time, were frozen in that Binance account earlier this year.

At the time, Binance confirmed it froze the accounts at the request of the ED.

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