If you haven't heard about Fortnite, it's a game similar to PUBG and one of its biggest rivals in India. It's also bigger than PUBG in the US and UK. It appears criminals have realised this too, and are using the in-game virtual currency to launder black money.
V-Bucks are Fortnite's currency of choice. Though the game itself is free, buying V-Bucks with cash lets you purchase aesthetic bonuses like character skins, emotes, and special vehicle designs. You don't need to just buy your own though, you can also gift V-Bucks to other players. And that's exactly what criminals are relying on.
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The Independent, along with cybersecurity firm Sixgill, conducted an investigation into Fortnite money laundering, and the results were dire. Scammers are using stolen credit card information to buy V-Bucks, which they then sell off at a discounted rate in order to "whitewash" the funds. A small quantity of these discount V-Bucks sales happen on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. However, they found most of them being carried out on the Dark Web.
The Dark Web is a section of the Internet that remains hidden without special software, perfect for carrying on illegal trades. Additionally, the criminals making these sales are selling for Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash, both on the blockchain and therefore almost impossible to trace to a single person.
The Sixgill agents say they discovered the racket while going undercover as interested buyers. They can't say how much of a profit these money launderers make, however they identified that Fortnite items earned more than $250,000 on eBay in just a 60 days last year. On top of that, the number of mentions of the battle royale game have skyrocketed recently on the dark web.
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"Criminals are executing carding fraud and getting money in and out of the Fortnite system with relative impunity," Sixgill senior intelligence analyst Benjamin Preminger told The Independent. According to him, Epic Games doesn't seem to care about the illegal activities so long as their currency is being bought and paid for.
The developer did however eventually respond to the report, saying it "takes these issues seriously." But aside from encouraging users to turn on two-factor authentication on their accounts and not re-use passwords, they haven't really specified what their plan of action to deal with this is.
And this is a problem that's only going to get bigger, alongside Epic Games' profit margin. Fortnite turned a profit of $3 billion in 2018. You have to wonder, how much of that was stolen money?