The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday arrested an advocate at the Mumbai airport as part of a money-laundering investigation linked to an alleged pan-India cyber fraud and digital arrest case involving transactions worth Rs 28,000 crore, taking the total arrests in the matter to seven, official sources said.
A team from the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) Panaji unit intercepted Rashesh Upadhyay alias Rashesh Shah at a boarding gate inside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport when he was about to take a flight to Delhi.
Officers from the Customs and the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) assisted the ED in zeroing in on Upadhyay, the sources said.
The accused was taken to Panaji and produced before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court, which sent him to ED custody till October 29, they said.
This was the seventh arrest made by the ED in the case.
The central agency earlier said in a statement that its probe in the case began following the registration of an FIR by Goa Police on June 9, 2025, after a Goa-based woman was allegedly duped into transferring Rs 2.60 crore between May 21, 2025, and June 2, 2025, into multiple mule accounts by cyber fraudsters who placed her under digital arrest.
The ED told the court while seeking Upaddhay's remand that he was a "key node" of the network and that when the bank accounts of the alleged cybercrime network were frozen on police complaints, he got them released by bribing the officials of the concerned agencies, routed through 'Angadiyas' (a private banking network of individuals dealing in cash).
The ED alleged that the accused enrolled as an advocate but never appeared or filed a 'Vakalatnama' for any of the accused or their companies.
The agency said the money cheated from the Goa victim was put in 400 mule accounts of commodity, travel and forex companies run through dummy directors.
These funds were subsequently withdrawn in cash and converted into foreign currency through RBI-licensed money changers, it said.
The alleged cyber fraud network handled banking transactions worth nearly Rs 28,000 crore and deposited about Rs 2,900 crore in cash, according to the agency.
Its accounts appear in over 300 victim complaints and more than 160 FIRs across 20 states and Union territories, with reported losses of more than Rs 400 crore, the ED said.
The agency is trying to identify the officials who allegedly took bribes, the 'Angadiyas' and other intermediaries, and trace the full proceeds of crime.
Digital arrest is a cybercrime in which fraudsters, posing as law enforcement officials, threaten people through audio or video calls, virtually holding them hostage and pressuring them into transferring money online.
The government has said that digital arrest is not legal in India and such crimes should be immediately reported to the national cyber helpline number 1930 or at the web portal cybercrime.gov.in.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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