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Twitch Money Laundering scam – 40 people arrested

Several Twitch streamers have been implicated in a money laundering scandal, 40 people have now been arrested in Turkey.... | 5. January 2022

Several Twitch streamers have been implicated in a money laundering scandal, 40 people have now been arrested in Turkey. Who these people are it is not yet clear. With large sums of bit donations, there was already suspicion that something weird was going on. This suspicion has now been confirmed. In October 2021, there was a massive leak of data, in which a few attentive people noticed that something was not quite right with the numbers of some streamers.

Turkish streamer Ahmet “Jahrein” Sonuç was the first to point out that some donations seemed very shady. In particular, a large number of Turkish streamers, though they were quite small and didn’t have many followers, kept getting large sums – between $500 and $10,000 – donated through Bits. This caught the eye with the data leak and it quickly became clear that it had to be a scam.

40 out of 150 people have already been arrested

Shortly after the leak, Twitch declared that they would take action against the scammers. Now 40 people have been arrested for exactly that reason, as the bit donations were basically a long-term money laundering operation. The scammers allegedly laundered more than $10 million in money through Twitch.

Turkish news agency Demirören News Agency has reported that Turkish police have arrested 40 people in 11 provinces over the Twitch scam. Four more suspects are still being searched for right now. Apparently, however, many more people are involved in this scam. In total, there are probably 150 people involved in the money laundering. The remaining 100 scammers are still under investigation.

It is not yet known exactly how the scam came about, but it is believed that hackers stole credit card data from random people and then negotiated with Twitch streamers to transfer them large amounts of money via bits. The streamers, in turn, then transferred 80 percent of the money to various bank accounts owned by the hackers and kept 20 percent for themselves as “wages.” And that’s exactly what money laundering is – and punishable by law.

Why were so many minors involved in the scam?

Many well-known names were implicated or admitted to knowingly or unknowingly profiting from the scheme. Among these big names is 19-year-old star player Mehmet Yağız “cNed” İpek, who plays in the Valorant lineup for Acend. Acend received a large donation in bits, possibly from a money launderer, which he did not report. However, it is not known if the streamer was really involved in a scam – it may have just been a coincidence.

Acend drafted a statement shortly after, coming to their player’s defense and saying that such a large donation only came in once and he didn’t know the donor. What is particularly worrying is that a (seemingly large) portion of the scammers are minors. That means they may have also been incited to launder money by someone else or a criminal group, but that’s not yet confirmed and so far is pure speculation.

If the scammers and streamers are found guilty, it remains to be seen what penalties will be imposed and how severe they will be. It will probably take some time to find all of the 150 people involved, so the criminal proceedings will not take place in the near future.