The shady scandal, which utilised the Twitch platform, reportedly totalled an astounding $9.8 million by the time police came knocking.
While millions of gamers turn to Twitch every day to check out the latest game or chat with their favourite streamers, it seems as though a pretty large group of individuals have been doing something a little more nefarious.
According to a report from Kotaku, over in Turkey, police have taken a whopping 40 suspects into custody over the belief that they have been taking part in a highly illegal money laundering scandal – all conducted using Twitch.
The report indicates that said suspects were apparently obtaining stolen credit cards and then using those cards to purchase the streaming company’s own virtual currency. Typically, these ‘Bits’ are bought by Twitch users and then offloaded to their streamer of choice as an act of financial support.
Makes sense in theory, but these sneaky scoundrels are said to have been sending their stolen funds to particular streamers who they had already struck a deal with. The master plan: have the streamer then refund the scammers up to 80 percent of the funds (with real cash) while keeping the remainder 20 percent in their back pocket. Pretty shitty stuff if you ask us.
How Turkish police proceed to deal with the situation and what penalties will result remains to be seen, but considering an email paper trail dates back around two years it’s probably not going to be good.
Worse yet, in that time it is believed that the scammers amassed a shocking $9.8 million.
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It seems Twitch just isn’t having a great time at the moment, especially after copping some flak for allowing streamers to see why people decide to cancel their subscriptions back in December. Maybe February will be better?
For more on this topic, follow the Gaming Observer.
