17 June,2025 05:08 PM IST | Mumbai | Diwakar Sharma
So far, the ED has seized, attached, or frozen assets worth Rs 160.8 crore, including properties located in Spain. Representational Pic/File
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday said that it carried out search operations at seven locations in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and Gurgaon on June 13 2025 as part of an ongoing probe into a illegal online forex trading scam involving the OctaFX Trading App and its website www.octafx.com.
The searches were conducted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, and resulted in the seizure of various incriminating documents and digital devices, officials said.
The investigation into the matter had began after an FIR was registered by Shivaji Nagar Police Station in Pune against suspects accused of cheating investors by making false promises of high returns through forex trading on the OctaFX platform.
According to the ED, OctaFX, along with its Indian partner OctaFX India Pvt Ltd, operated in India without permission from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The platform reportedly collected over Rs 800 crore from Indian investors in under a year, under the pretext of offering foreign exchange trading.
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The ED found that OctaFX used mule accounts and routed investor funds through the unauthorised payment aggregator. It also used fake e-commerce shell companies and forged KYC documents to gain access to payment gateways.
To hide the true origin of the funds, OctaFX disguised these transactions as online shopping payments, refunds, chargebacks, and vendor payments. In reality, they were being used for fake forex trading and illegal betting payouts.
The investigation revealed that about 50 per cent of user funds were diverted in this manner, officials said.
The OctaFX was found to have used URL masking to hide the identity of payment gateways, making it difficult for banks and regulators to trace the money back to the unauthorised platform, the ED said.
So far, the ED has seized, attached, or frozen assets worth Rs 160.8 crore, including properties located in Spain.
The agency said that the probe was further ongoing.
