Twitch announced to the UK-based gaming news site Dexerto that it took action against 150 people in September regarding allegations of money laundering by users in Turkey.
Making a statement to Dexerto, one of the world’s largest esports and gaming news sites, Twitch stated that they took action in September because 150 users abused their monetization tools.
A spokesperson for the company stated that there have been concerns about how users in Turkey make money in the Twitch community, but that necessary precautions have been taken against people involved in prohibited activities.
“We regularly operate on Twitch to prevent and combat financial fraud, we only took action in September for 150 users in Turkey because they abused their monetization tools,” the spokesperson said.
In the statement, it was also emphasized that everyone who is a victim of fraud should reach the company, while it is emphasized that all users who violate local laws or Twitch rules are constantly working to identify and remove them from the platform.
Recently, it was talked about the establishment of a money laundering and fraud network on Twitch, a live broadcasting and gaming platform in Turkey.
In order to expose this network and clean these users from the platform, a campaign is organized on social media with the Clean Twitch tag.
It is claimed that an amount of $9.8 billion was laundered via Twitch, mostly from Turkey.
Allegations emerged with the hacking of Twitch
Allegations of money laundering by some Twitch publishers in Turkey emerged as a result of the hacking of Amazon’s Twitch platform.
A month ago, hackers shared a large data set of the platform with the internet.
As a result, it was revealed how much money the streamers on Twitch made.
As a result of sharing this data set, it was seen that many users with few followers in Turkey made large amounts of money, which led to the emergence of money laundering and fraud claims.
According to the data shared as a result of the hack, high amounts of donations were made by some users to accounts with only 50 followers.
With virtual commodities called Bits on Twitch, you can donate by sending emojis representing different amounts of money to the user you follow.
It turned out that high amounts of money were sent to users whose live broadcasts were watched by a small number of people in Turkey with Bits on Twitch.
It was determined that over a thousand dollars were sent daily to some accounts.
Dealing with publishers over stolen credit cards
Allegedly, hackers donate to their contracted publishers using Bits on stolen credit cards.
Publishers then keep 20 or 30 percent of these donations and send the rest to hackers.
Following the emergence of these allegations, some Twitch users from Turkey shared the messages of people who offered to make a deal by contacting them via social media.
At the end of October, Dexerto news site reported that Turkish players of Valorant, developed by the game company Riot Games, were also included in this fraud network.
Some of the players in question also admitted that they received these donations through their social media accounts.
According to the news on game sites, Riot Games is expected to cut ties with these players.
CHP Deputy Tekin brought the allegations to the Turkish Grand National Assembly
In this process, one of the leading names of the Clean Twitch campaign was the publisher named Ahmet Result, nicknamed Jahrein, who has 1.7 million followers on Twitch.
Ahmet Result was summoned to testify by the Department of Combating Cybercrime this week, based on his statements and allegations on this issue.
CHP Istanbul Deputy Gürsel Tekin submitted a parliamentary question to the Parliament, asking the Treasury and Finance Minister Lütfi Elvan to answer these allegations.
Tekin also emphasized that the biggest victims of this fraud network are those whose credit cards were stolen.
In his Twitter post on October 31, Tekin called for these allegations to be investigated by the MASAK (Financial Crimes Investigation Board):
“An international network that steals credit card information not only of Turkish citizens but also of foreign persons and spends with these stolen cards, is laundering money by making an agreement with publishers. Various criminal organizations also hide themselves and in this way insert the proceeds of crime into the system.
“Here, the tools on the Twitch platform owned by Amazon are used as intermediaries. Bits obtained with stolen credit cards or crime income are sent to publishers for a commission, then the crypto money purchased with this value is sent to criminal organizations.
“Therefore, we are faced with a network operating internationally. There are victims living in America, Germany and various countries. Network members also operate in different countries. We have to approach the issue very seriously. We will follow the process.”