New Delhi: Thousands of crores stashed in bank accounts opened using fake identities, an intricate network of shell companies, call centres operating from outside India, and a robust hawala system. This is how partners Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, now based in Dubai, are allegedly running the Mahadev Online Book — an illicit betting platform being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and police in multiple states.
According to police sources, Chandrakar and Uppal are originally from Bhilai, Chhattisgarh. It is alleged that they built a customer base of thousands, illegally amassing several thousand crores in the process, which is regularly sent abroad through hawala channels and then used to pay kickbacks to stakeholders in India.
The ED suspects that the complex operation is being run with the help of senior IPS officers, other civil servants including officials in the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) in Chhattisgarh, said sources in the agency.
Mahadev Online Book provides a platform in the form of a mobile app for illegal betting on live games such as poker, other card games and chance games, besides cricket, badminton, tennis, football etc. It also allows visitors to play card games like teen patti, poker and ‘Dragon Tiger’, among others, in addition to virtual cricket.
The mobile app, sources in ED told ThePrint, even gives visitors the option to bet on various elections in India.
On Wednesday, the ED arrested assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Chandrabhushan Verma of the Chhattisgarh Police for allegedly acting as “chief liaison officer” for the owners of Mahadev Online Book. Two hawala operators, Anil Dammani and Sunil Dammani, were also held in connection with the case. Sources in the ED said ASI Verma allegedly received Rs 65 crore in cash from the promoters of the app, adding that by his own admission, he “kept his cut” and distributed the rest as bribes to senior police officers and politicians.
The agency also raided over three dozen locations in Chhattisgarh including the premises of Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s political adviser Vinod Verma.
At a press conference Thursday, Vinod Verma, political adviser to Chhattisgarh CM, alleged that the ED committed a “dacoity” at his home the previous day. Verma dismissed claims about his alleged involvement in any money laundering operation and said the allegations are “based on a fictional news article” that appeared in a magazine a few years ago.
On the scale of this operation, a source in the ED told ThePrint that “there are over 2,000 bank accounts that have been opened on bogus KYCs to hold the money” that is made from users of the app. “These accounts are operated only for a few months and are then closed, following which new ones are opened using identities of different people.”
The source further said that the app’s promoters “lure people (by) promising good returns”, adding that the agency has reason to suspect that “kickbacks amounting to Rs 25 lakh a month are also being received by government servants in Chhattisgarh”.
In this case, the ED had initiated a money laundering probe based on 75 FIRs registered to date by the Chhattisgarh Police under IPC sections pertaining to cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy, besides relevant sections of the Gambling Act. According to sources in the state police, similar FIRs were registered against partners Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal in Visakhapatnam, Goa and Ahmedabad over the last six months.
ED sources said they have reached out to authorities in the UAE to gather more information on Chandrakar and Uppal while informing them about their alleged involvement in these cases. The agency suspects that the two men have amassed over Rs 4,500 crore.
ThePrint made attempts to reach the promoters of Mahadev Online Book for comment via the company’s Facebook page, but had not received a response by the time of publication. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
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The operation: how the app works
Officers say Mahadev Online Book maintains various websites and operates a number of closed groups on instant messaging apps through individuals they call ‘panel owners’.
These ‘panel owners’ advertise the contact number of Mahadev Online Book over websites, luring people to play various games to earn profits. Once they click on the advertisement, participants are asked to contact certain WhatsApp numbers for further communication.
Upon contacting those numbers, they are asked to deposit money in a bank account to buy credits or tokens which allow them to play the games. For instance, Rs 5,000 will buy a participant 10,000 tokens that are then transferred to their user ID on the app.
“Once a user contacts this number, he will be provided two separate numbers. One is for depositing money and collecting points in user IDs used to make bets. The second is for contacting the website to encash accumulated points in designated IDs,” said the ED source quoted earlier.
These IDs, the source added, are “generally created on multiple websites like laser247.com, laserbook247.com, betbhai.com, betbook247.com, tigerexch247.com depending on the need and preference of the bettors”.
The preliminary investigation, it is learnt, has revealed that collection of money, creation of user IDs, distribution of user IDs and distribution of money is done by ‘panel owners’.
ED sources also said that all the games are “rigged in a manner such that overall, the panel owners will not lose money and despite initial profits, ultimately, the participants are likely to lose money”.
Pan India recruitment, flimsy bank A/Cs
According to investigators, such is the scale of the operation that the job of luring people to play these games and collect money in different bank accounts is outsourced to ‘panel owners’ recruited from across the country.
The main office, however, is managed by Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal in Dubai and is commonly referred to as ‘Head Office’, another ED source said. “The betting app is operated by various panels or branches sold by Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal like a small franchise. But they keep nearly 80 percent of the profit of the operations.”
According to the source, the job of the ‘panel owners’ is to create a pool of people who will play the game. If the ‘panel owner’ has a group of 100 players, they would collect the money paid by those players in the bank account created using fake IDs. Once the money is collected, the ‘panel owners’ would inform the ‘Head Office’ and they will then create user IDs for the players and add tokens to their profiles. The ‘panel owner’ would then distribute these IDs to individual players, the source explained.
The source also said that players have to deposit money in “benami accounts shared online” after which they are assigned panels by the ‘head office’.
“Payouts are also done using benami bank accounts. These are either opened fraudulently or are loaned for commission,” the source added.
According to the source, weekly sheets are shared with the ‘panel owners’ by the ‘Head Office’ containing the statistics of all bets, along with total profit or total loss. Whatever be the final result of the bets, the ‘panel owners’ get a 20 percent share and this amount is delivered to them either through banking channels or through hawala.
“The rest of the profits are appropriated by the Head Office. Bank accounts and WhatsApp numbers are changed frequently. Even if FIRs are registered, normally only the small level punters or panel operators are arrested. The main accused sitting abroad are out of the reach of the Indian law enforcement agencies,” said the second source.
A preliminary investigation has also revealed that most of the bank accounts linked to the case were opened in Chhattisgarh.
A third source in the ED said that since the ‘panel owners’ started making such profits, it has now become a sought-after role in the state.
“Multiple call centres are being run from abroad to assist players and panel operators and despite it being in the notice of the police, the operations were allowed to run. The youth of Bhilai thronged to Dubai in huge numbers and after gaining experience in running back end operations are coming to India to open their own panels,” the source told ThePrint.
“The scale is huge. We are still not able to identify how much money has been made and laundered till now,” the source added.
ASI Chandrabhushan Verma & ‘kickbacks’
According to sources in the ED, the probe so far has revealed that although ASI Verma is not a very senior officer in the police hierarchy, his alleged connections with the CM’s political adviser Vinod Verma and the kickbacks he allegedly received from Dubai, enabled him to influence senior officers in the force.
Verma allegedly paid Rs 1.5 crore to six officers (Rs 25 lakh each) last month, sources added.
An ED officer who did not want to be named told ThePrint that ASI Verma was acting as the “main liaison” for Mahadev Book Online in Chhattisgarh.
“He, along with Satish Chandrakar, was receiving hefty monthly money via hawala from Dubai-based promoters of Mahadev Online Book and was distributing the same to senior police officers and leaders politically connected to Chief Minister’s Office,” the officer said.
The officer also said that ASI Verma has “admitted before the ED that he was receiving and paying large monthly bribes to many powerful people”.
A statement released by the ED Wednesday said ASI Verma admitted that the amount of bribes allegedly paid was enhanced after police action in May 2022. “The bribes were enhanced to water down cases, to include non-bailable offences, and to restrict prosecution up to local punters and to prevent future action on their operations,” read the statement.
Further, a senior ED officer claimed that the accused in custody have named high-ranking officials connected to the CMO who they allege received hefty kickbacks on a monthly basis. The officer, however, added that the agency is not merely relying on oral testimonies and is making efforts to corroborate the claims. “The arrested accused persons have admitted to their role and have given a trail of the bribes and a list of the beneficiaries of these bribes. Further investigation is under progress,” the officer added.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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