Turkish police took forty suspects into custody on Jan. 4, alleging they were laundering money through Twitch. It's alleged that the suspects used stolen credit cards to buy Bits, the platform's currency, and send them to streamers.
These streamers allegedly refunded most of the money back (around 70-80%) to the suspects, pocketing the remaining amounts. Several streamers have admitted to the crime, but none are as prominent as Mehmet Yagiz' cNed' ipek, a Valorant pro on Ascend.
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Twitch Streamer Arrested
Despite stating that he didn't participate in this scheme, cNed admitted that he benefited from it. After cNed's brother spoke to one of the suspects, bits were transferred to cNed, who did not report them. To quote him (via Upcomer translation):
"That guy sent me the bits, the bits transferred to me. I didn't report those bits to Twitch, I acknowledge that. I didn't report to Twitch and took the money."
It probably doesn't need stating that theft of credit cards and money laundering are serious crimes. The process may work well, but police can easily track where online payments went. The amount stolen remains undisclosed, though we'd speculate a substantial amount considering it attracted police attention.
Suspects were arrested from 11 different provinces, and some of them were minors.
Story originally reported by Dexerto.
What do you think? Should Twitch upgrade its security, or is this something that's going to end up happening every so often?
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