In recent weeks, a group of Turkish streamers have uncovered an alleged fraud and money laundering ring using the live streaming platform Twitch. According to what has been known so far, the hackers have made almost $ 10 million in total.
An anonymous hacker last month Fitró the Twitch source code with information about user payments and streamers’ income.
Although at first, most of the information focused on what the Twitch giants earn, over time, users from Turkey who thoroughly examined the leak they noticed a less visible detail– Streamers making up to $ 1,800 a day, despite having only 40-50 viewers.
Many of these users have joined on Twitter with the profile a “clean Twitch” (or #temizTwitch in Turkish) where they share these discoveries.
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$ 0
$ 0
$ 1000
$ 1000
$ 0
$ 0 pic.twitter.com/Iih5WFP3pr– #TemizTwitch (@TemizBirTwitch) October 31, 2021
How they have achieved that income despite their few followers
The money came to them through a platform called Bit, which allows viewers to express their thank the hosts with special paid emojis. Twitch transfers one percent of the revenue earned through Bit to individual streamers.
As part of the scam, a group of hackers allegedly stole or first obtained credit card information from random people. These hackers then negotiated deals with Twitch streamers to send them large payouts of money through Bit. The streamers then reimbursed 80% of the money received to different bank accounts belonging to the hackers, thus laundering the money.
According to calculations by the Turkish news website Haberler.com, in the last two years a total of $ 9.8 million was laundered through 2,400 streamers Turks.