Playing Games with Money Laundering
January 29, 2019
Mark this one down in your diaries: just when you thought you’ve heard all the strangest ways imaginable to launder money, the dark web strikes again. This time, the incredibly popular online game, Fortnite is being used. Specifically, the pseudo-currency players use to buy weapons and outfits—V-Bucks. We discovered how this strange scam works via a recent Digital Trends article, “Fortnite V-Bucks Used By Criminals for Money Laundering Schemes.”
According to the story:
Criminals are buying V-Bucks from the official Fortnite store using stolen credit card information. The V-Bucks are then sold in online black markets at discounted rates to “clean” the money, according to an investigation by The Independent and research by cybersecurity firm Sixgill.
From bizarre video game-related ways of washing dirty money, to Mexican drug cartels using Chinese crypto-brokers to do the same, one thing is abundantly clear to law enforcement. It pays to look under every rock and follow every lead on the dark web, because criminals are never going to stop looking for strange new avenues to make money.
Yep, games.
Patrick Roland, January 29, 2019
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