The CID-Crime’s Cyber Centre of Excellence in Gujarat announced on Saturday that Chetan Gangani, a resident of Surat, was taken into custody for his role in laundering funds through a Pakistan-based USDT (Tether) crypto wallet.
According to officials, Gangani assisted a cybercrime syndicate by converting ₹10 crore of illicit proceeds into USDT and forwarding them via his BitGet crypto wallet over a period of four months. Investigators said he earned a 0.10% commission on each transaction.
Links to Multi-District ₹200-Crore Fraud
Gangani’s arrest follows the detention of six men earlier this month from Morbi, Surendranagar, Surat, and Amreli. These suspects allegedly provided 100 mule bank accounts to cybercriminals who routed ₹200 crore to Dubai-based syndicates.
The same accounts were used in at least 386 nationwide cybercrime cases, including digital arrest scams, task frauds, investment frauds, loan scams, and part-time job frauds. The network leveraged a complex chain of accounts to disguise money trails before converting the proceeds into cryptocurrency.
Direct Financial Links to Pakistan Traced
Officials said the Gujarat cyber team “meticulously tracked the money trail” through seven layers of laundering—from domestic bank accounts to international crypto transfers. The probe revealed that ₹10 crore was sent to a Pakistan-based Binance-linked USDT account, which had received over ₹25 crore cumulatively from Indian sources.
Deputy Chief Minister Harsh Sanghavi, who oversees the state’s Home Department, called it “a major breakthrough against cross-border cybercrime.” He added that the crackdown demonstrates how cybercriminals in India are being co-opted into international laundering networks using digital assets.
Expanding Scope of Cyber Financial Crime
The case has renewed focus on the misuse of mule accounts and crypto exchanges by fraud networks to move money abroad. Law enforcement agencies have flagged the growing reliance on Tether (USDT) for cross-border transactions due to its anonymity and dollar-pegged stability.
Officials said more arrests are likely as authorities collaborate with international crypto-tracking firms and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to trace additional wallets linked to the syndicate.
