A politician from the nation of Turkey is calling for a full-on investigation of streaming platform Twitch. The motion comes from the reveal of a devious money laundering scheme that occurred on the site, where Turkish streamers were pulling in huge amounts of Bit donations, despite having a miniscule amount of followers.

The massive Twitch data breach, which was in turned leaked to the public, initially occured during the first week of October 2021. Thought to have been done in retaliation to the streaming site's "hate raid" issue, the leak included Twitch's source code, user passwords, payment details, and apparently a money laundering scheme in Turkey.

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For those unaware, Bits act as a form of virtual currency on Twitch, which viewers can purchase to "cheer" on streamers which simultaneously donates money to them. Twitch takes a cut of those funds, keeping roughly 30% of the transactions, and this was essentially how the scam worked. Thieves would use stolen credit card info to buy and donate large sums of Bits to abiding streamers, who would then funnel the majority of the cash into multiple other accounts--keeping a reported 20-30% in the process. The scheme's set-up is pretty much quintessential money laundering, and is something that the Turkish streaming community has largely known of. Streamer Grimnax states "this is something that many of us have been aware of for a long time."

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With Turkish politician Gürsel Tekin bringing the money laundering scheme to light, many esports pros and top-level streamers in the country are facing the chopping block. Valorant pros cNed and BBL Legoo have both had their accounts suspended, with the latter getting axed from the pro BBL ESports team. In addition to less-than-legally acquired money, the massive Twitch leak also revealed how much stateside streamers were making as well. People like xQc made the top of the list, and also revealed some disparity between its supposedly most popular personalities and the actual top earners. Top female streamer Pokimane, for instance, only ranked in at #39.

While many may see the call for Turkey's government to get involved with the gaming industry as a bit of an extreme measure, the United States government has already done something somewhat similar. As many will remember earlier this year, stock traders on Reddit caused mayhem by artificially spiking GameStop's stock value, which caused so much unrest in the US stock market that the Biden Adminstration was actively monitoring the situation. While the United States government never ended up stepping in, its a testament to just how impactful gaming is on an economy.

Hopefully either the Turkish government or Twitch takes action to prevent any other money laundering schemers from taking gamer's hard-earned money. They'll need every bit of it too, seeing as how expensive next-gen consoles are in the country.

MORE: The Most Interesting Details from the Massive Twitch Leak

Source: PC Gamer