Money Laundering in Fortnite

we linked to

yesterday

alleges
criminals are taking advantage of the in-game economy of

Fortnite

for money
laundering. It turns out there was also a longer report on this last week on

The Independent

(thanks

Slashdot

via

Ant

) with more on this charge. Here’s a bit

Stolen
credit card details are being used to purchase V-bucks – the virtual currency
used to buy items in the game – from the official Fortnite store. By selling
V-bucks at a discounted rate to players, the criminals are effectively able to
“clean” the money.



An investigation by The Independent into online black markets selling V-bucks,
together with research by cyber security firm Sixgill, revealed the scale of the
money laundering operations.



Discounted V-bucks are being sold in bulk on the dark web – a hidden section of
the internet only accessible using specialist software – as well as in smaller
quantities on the open web by advertising them on social media platforms like
Instagram and Twitter.



By posing as potential customers, Sixgill agents uncovered operations being
conducted around the globe in Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic and English.



“Criminals are executing carding fraud and getting money in and out of the
Fortnite system with relative impunity,” Benjamin Preminger, a senior
intelligence analyst at Sixgill, told The Independent.



“Threat actors [a malicious person or entity] are scoffing at Epic Games’ weak
security measures, saying that the company doesn’t seem to care about players
defrauding the system and purchasing discounted V-bucks… This directly touches
on the ability of threat actors to launder money through the game.”