Thanks to an investigation currently ongoing on by Reddit user quirah, several Twitch users in Turkey could be involved in money laundering using Bit-Fraud and Ad-Fraud.
It’s being said that people are laundering money using stolen credit cards with the use of small streamers within the country with kickbacks being a 50-50 split.
One streamer specifically named in these allegations is “HocaKO.” The user has an average viewcount of 202, but has received tons of revenue that is not normal for an streamer with this viewcount. One way they seem to be doing this is related to Ad-Fraud.
This ad-fraud is reportedly being used thanks to an add-on via Google Chrome. This unnamed add-on reportedly spams international ads and in this way, partnered streamers are boosting their ad revenues. An example of this comes via Twitch Tracker tracking a user going by “Pwnage.” This user has seen his ad revenue go from $70 per month to over $30,000 per month.
Quirah has also discovered that a majority of these Twitch streamers play a game called Turkish Knight Online which has a cult following within the the country.
Thankfully, it does seem something might be done thanks to famous Turkish streamer Jahrein coming forward about this issue and as a result has even been picked up by a Turkish newspaper. Rumors have also started circulation that since this article was published, the Turkish Department of Finance will be starting an investigation.
If you would like to read the detailed post containing several pieces of evidence to back up these claims you can do so here.
