Criminals may have laundered as much as $10M through Twitch Bit scam

Nov 2, 2021

Twitch’s latest scandal is a mess of money laundering and mismanagement that may have seen criminals pass as much as $10M through their system over the last couple of years. The scam involved using stolen credit cards to buy "Bits", a virtual currency used to tip content creators on Twitch, with ‘streamers’ taking a cut of the profits in exchange for entering into the illegal agreement.

The story broke, initially in Turkey, as a result of the Twitch leaks that came a few weeks back, when people began to notice some odd figures in the list of creator payouts. Small streamers with no more than 40-50 viewers were clearing hundreds or in some cases thousands of euros a day in Bit donations, and stood out like a sore thumb in the leaked list of most profitable steamers.

The story originally seems to have centred around Turkish streamers in the VALORANT category, with initial reporting suggesting as many as 300 accounts could be banned as a result of the illegal activity. The impact in Turkey was considerable too, with Republican People’s Party Vice-President Gürsel Tekin calling for an investigation by MASAK, the Financial Crimes Investigation Board in Turkey.

Twitch yet to act

At present, the most action the public has seen over the matter is the as-yet unconfirmed news that Riot are set to ban those involved from ever streaming Riot IP again, which would mean mainly VALORANT players in this case. Twitch themselves are yet to comment on the matter, with the company tending to take a more reactive approach to policing what is the biggest live-streaming platform on the planet.

Riot’s own man on the ground, Erdinç İyikul, stated that the company is aware of the issue, but cannot make any definitive statement at present. He did confirm that no accounts have been banned yet, and that Riot would wait until the relevant authorities have completed their investigation into the allegations, with no indication that Riot have any concrete plan in place to ban players at this point in time.

Some streamers have already admitted their part in the scheme, and apologised to their fans, while there still seems to be confusion over the role others may have played, if any at all. It is safe to say this has the potential to be a far more damaging scandal to Twitch than their recent issues with hot tubs and ASMR though.