A group of Turkish Twitch streamers was allegedly involved in a $10 million money-laundering scheme where the scheme was exposed as a result of the Twitch data leak, which revealed the platform’s highest-earning streamers.
According to Middle East Eye, a group of Turkish streamers with low follower counts were raking in big bucks from Bit donations. Viewers on Twitch can buy Bits in bulk and then use them to show support for their favorite streamers while also making a donation. Each Bit used to cheer for partnered and affiliate streamers is worth one cent and that hackers stole credit card information from people and then worked out a deal with Twitch streamers to send large sums of money via Bits. Streamers would then refund 80% of the money to the hackers’ various bank accounts while keeping the remaining 20%, effectively money laundering.
Following the exposure of the scam as a result of the Twitch data leak, Turkish Twitch users launched an online campaign to “clean Twitch” (#temizTwitch).
Twitch Streamer Grimnax was asked to participate in the scam, and is one of the campaigners and said that this scheme has been known for a very long time and many of them are aware of it but they couldn’t confirm Twitch and the owner Amazon, let alone the audience, for years.
They waited for Twitch’s big names to speak up about the said issue because he and other mid-level influencers weren’t loud enough.
Twitch streamer with 1.7 million followers Jahrein has publicly urged Twitch to take action saying that he has testified about fraud and shared data with the police cybercrime office and that the said scheme has gotten a response from Twitch.
A Twitch spokesperson said that they want to assure their community that they will not hesitate to take decisive action against accounts engaged in prohibited conduct and on a regular basis, they work to combat and prevent financial fraud on the platform, and in September alone, they took action against over 150 partners in Turkey for abusing their monetization tools.
Twitch also said that they’ve been working with those who have come forward to tell them about their said experiences.
