It happened in Turkey, as the newspaper reports Daily Sabah, that forty individuals were suspected of having laundered money using Twitch. And to understand how they took advantage of Amazon’s platform, it’s good to remember how it works. Twitch is a platform that allows its users to stream live content on their own channel, as well as watch that content live. During these broadcasts, viewers can donate money to the streamer (the host of the channel they are watching) in three different ways: by paying for a subscription, donating or purchasing bits.
And it is the latter that interests us. Bits are the currency of the platform, only purchasable via real money and then sent to the streamer. The accused would therefore have bought bits on Twitch with stolen credit cards, which they allegedly sent to some streamers. As a result of this service, streamers would have returned 70-80% of all money spent to scammers, thus keeping 20-30% interest.. According to Dexerto, it would be nearly $ 9.8 million that would have been laundered.
How were the suspects spotted? At first, these are certain streamers that attracted attention: despite their low average number of spectators, several thousand dollars were given to them through these bits. Amounts revealed following the hack of Twitch in early October 2024: the income of streamers in 2019 was then revealed. A month later, Twitch announced that it was taking action against 150 streamers who allegedly took part in this money laundering, including certain professional players from Valorant.
Today, it is Demirören News Agency which announces that several individuals in connection with these frauds have been arrested by the Turkish police. Through operations carried out in eleven different regions, forty individuals were arrested in this case.
