Binance helps Indian authorities trace $4.76m in Fiewin gaming scam

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced that it helped recover $47.6 million in losses suffered by victims of a gaming scam involving online gaming platform Fiewin, courtesy of the Enforcement Directorate of India.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, announced on September 25 that it was assisting Indian authorities in investigating the Fiewin gaming app, which resulted in the arrest of four people linked to the online gaming scam.

The statement noted that Binance’s Financial Intelligence Unit provides critical intelligence in tracking money laundering and the suspects behind the network.

“The Fiewin app lured users into online gambling and gaming with promises of easy earnings,” Binance wrote, adding that Binance’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) assisted in tracing the funds and uncovering the fraud network.

The Binance team found that the flow of funds was distributed across several crypto wallets connected to a global cryptocurrency exchange.

While it is not yet clear whether the $47.6 million has been recovered, Binance stated that the case is still ongoing and that they will continue to assist the Indian Police Department in tracking down the wider criminal network behind the scam.

Commenting on the collaboration with Binance, an unnamed representative from the DG India stated that the role the platform played in the Fiewin app case was crucial in unraveling the complex nature of cryptocurrency-related financial crimes.

“This case highlights the critical importance of collaboration between public institutions like ED and private entities like Binance in dealing with new types of digital threats,” a Binance spokesperson said.

Fiewin is an online gaming app that initially promoted itself as a legitimate platform where users could easily earn money by playing mini-games. New users created accounts to participate in the app’s games, which included the option to “top up” their in-app balance.

However, users quickly noticed that once their funds reached a certain amount, the app froze their accounts, making it impossible to recover them. According to Binance, Indian police began receiving a flood of reports from victims who had lost their funds to the app.

Due to the increasing number of reports, the case was taken over by India’s Enforcement Directorate, a special unit for combating financial crimes.

Through the investigation, ED discovered that Fiewin was part of a much larger international criminal network that orchestrated the movement of illicit funds through a variety of methods, including bank accounts and crypto wallets, creating a complex web of difficult-to-trace transactions.

This is not the first time that the Indian ED has partnered with Binance in an investigation. In May 2024, the ED and Binance’s FIU also managed to uncover the E-Nugget scam, a digital investment scam that used a gaming platform to lure victims.

Through blockchain analysis and field research, the team was able to identify and freeze 42 digital asset accounts and hundreds of bank accounts containing approximately $6 million in stolen funds from users of the gaming platform.

On August 19, 2023, Binance was officially registered as an Indian Intelligence reporting agency. The registration comes after a seven-month ban imposed on Binance by the Indian authorities for operating without proper registration.