ED arrests three more in Goa ‘digital arrest’ cyber fraud case involving Rs 2.60 crore

The Enforcement Directorate arrested three more accused, including a chartered accountant, in a Goa “digital arrest” cyber fraud case involving Rs 2.60 crore. The agency alleged the funds moved through hundreds of accounts as part of an organised money-laundering network

Panaji: The ED arrested three more accused, including a chartered accountant, and got their custody for questioning till September 1 in connection with the digital arrest of a Goa resident who was coerced to transfer Rs 2.60 crore to a dubious account, an official said on Saturday.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), Panaji Zonal Office, arrested Bhushan Suryakant Moye, Vilas Narayan Pawar and Shailesh Dagdu Chavan on August 27 under Section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, in the case relating to the “digital arrest” cyber fraud perpetrated against a resident of Goa.

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The Special Court (PMLA), Goa, has remanded them to ED custody up to September 1. This takes the number of persons arrested in this case to five. Fahim Moin Hussain Sayed and Naim Mueen Sayyed were arrested on August 23, the ED said in a statement.

The ED initiated the investigation based on FIR No. 17/2025 dated June 9, 2025, registered by the Cyber Crime Police Station, North Goa, wherein the victim was kept on a video call, made to believe that she was under criminal investigation, and coerced into transferring Rs 2.60 crore into accounts falsely described as “Secret Supervision Accounts”.

The ED’s investigation revealed that the money entered an organised apparatus existing to receive the proceeds of cyber fraud as banking credits, convert them into cash, and convert that cash into foreign currency through companies holding Full Fledged Money Changer licences of the Reserve Bank of India, the statement said.

The funds were fragmented across more than 400 beneficiary accounts and passed into companies whose directors on record are persons of no means, the accounts being operated by others, projecting the Proceeds of Crime as untainted, the ED said.

These entities’ accounts are the subject of 330 victim complaints and 163 First Information Reports across more than 20 States and Union Territories, with reported losses of Rs 417.49 crore, and have carried banking transactions exceeding Rs 27,850 crore, the ED said.

Bhushan Suryakant Moye, a Chartered Accountant, incorporated 21 companies of the network upon identity documents supplied to him, and handled those companies and their 43 three dummy directors as one group, filing their income-tax returns as a single exercise rather than as separate assignments, it said.

Vilas Narayan Pawar arranged the RTGS entries through which the tainted funds reached the network’s accounts, and Shailesh Dagdu Chavan supplied the cash against those transfers, the statement said.

The premises of all three were searched on August 21, the laundering activity having continued after the searches of July 17 until days before the arrests of August 23, necessitating their arrest and custodial interrogation, the ED said.