Would You Have Assisted The Hackers With Exchanging Bits
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Would You Have Assisted The Hackers With Exchanging Bits
Last month an anonymous hacker leaked a plethora of Twitch intellectual data in a massive 125GB data dump, revealing the earnings of streamers, Twitch source code, and more. Upon examining the contents of the leaked data, the Turkish online community detected irregular payments among certain small Twitch streamers and some Valorant pros, who were believed to be cooperating with a group of scammers.
Over 2400 Turkish streamers were allegedly complicit in the money-laundering scheme, who, in cooperation with the scammers, had laundered a total of $9,883,000 over two years. Hackers would purchase Twitch Bits using stolen credit cards in the scam and donate the Bits to the streamers' channels. The streamers would then refund the money to the hacker's nominated bank accounts, keeping 20% of the initial donation, and effectively launder the money for the hacker.
Turkish streamers allegedly laundered $10M
According to a Turkish news source, the streamers and esports players involved with the money-laundering fraud were unaware of the illegality of the operation, claiming that they thought it was how the system typically worked.
One Turkish streamer, Grimnax, revealed how a hacker approached him on Discord for his complicity in the scam. In the screenshot, a hacker named "Sinan" offered Grimnax a 20% share of the Bit income if he agreed to refund the rest of the donated money.