ED freezes ₹192 crore linked to WinZO in money laundering probe

The Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Bengaluru Zonal Office, on Tuesday carried out search operations on the office premises of the accounting firm associated with online gaming company WinZO Pvt. Ltd.

According to an official statement, WinZO Pvt. Ltd. operates online real-money gaming services through its mobile application, WinZO. During the searches, the ED froze Proceeds of Crime (PoC) worth approximately ₹192 crore belonging to M/s ZO Games Pvt. Ltd., a fully owned Indian subsidiary of WinZO. The assets were frozen in the form of bank balances, fixed deposits, and mutual funds under Section 17(1A) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.

The agency said it had earlier conducted search and seizure operations on the office premises of WinZO Pvt. Ltd. and the residential premises of its director on November 18.

The evidence gathered during the searches and subsequent investigation revealed that the company was allegedly involved in criminal and unscrupulous practices. The ED claimed that customers were made to play real-money games against bots powered by artificial intelligence, algorithms or software, referred to internally as PPP/EP/Persona, without disclosing that they were not playing against human opponents.

The investigation further revealed that WinZO had allegedly restricted withdrawals of the funds of the customers held in their in-app wallets. The company is also accused of generating PoC in the form of “rake commission” earned from matches played between bots and real players on the platform.

According to the ED, WinZO earned around ₹177 crore from bot-based games between May 2024 and August 2025, and approximately ₹557 crore during the period April 2022 to December 2023. Even after the Union government imposed a ban on real-money gaming, the company allegedly continued to hold users’ funds amounting to ₹43 crore.

So far, the ED estimates that WinZO Pvt. Ltd. has generated PoC worth about ₹802 crore.

The agency also alleged that a portion of the illicit proceeds was siphoned off abroad to the United States and Singapore under the guise of overseas investments. Funds worth USD 54 million were found parked in a U.S. bank account held in the name of “WinZO US Inc.”, which the ED described as a shell company, claiming that all operational and banking activities were controlled from India.