40 People Arrested For Alleged Twitch Money Laundering Scheme

On Tuesday, Turkish police in eleven different provinces took forty suspects into custody for an alleged money laundering scam perpetrated using the Twitch streaming platform. Kotaku reports: According to Demiroren News Agency (via Daily Sabah and Dexerto), the suspects are accused of using stolen credit cards to buy Bits, which are essentially the platform's virtual currency. Those Bits were then allegedly sent to streamers, who then paid the scammers real money through a 70 to 80 percent refund. So, if the scammers bought 1,000 Bits for $10, this could be a way for them to make $7 or $8 from a stolen credit card, and streamers to pick up the difference. Compound more stolen credit cards and much higher dollar amounts, and you end up with a scam that could total an estimated $9.8 million. This appears to be a long-running operation, with an email paper trail going back two years.

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