For World of Warcraft, there is a tremendous need by players with little time but money to burn to buy gold instead of earning it. Other games, such as MMO powerhouse World of Warcraft, have their own in-game currency schemes which have been also used extensively, providing cover for money laundering. Researchers at Sixgill found that in 60 days, $250,000 worth of Fortnite items were sold on eBay. These profiles are then resold on auction platforms such as eBay or the Dark Web for an extra boost of profit.
Low-hanging fruit perhaps, but is carding fraud concerning in-game currency happening in large numbers? Security firm ZeroFOX conducted a research study that found that in one month alone, September to October of 2019, Fortnite saw 53,000 occurrences.Īfter the currency has been converted to V-bucks, the bad actor then creates profiles and fills them up with the V-bucks.
According to Benjamin Preminger, senior intelligence analyst at information security firm Sixgill, said, “criminals are executing carding fraud and getting money in and out of the Fortnite system with relative impunity.” Carding fraudĬarding fraud may just be the backbone of in-game currency money laundering. Adding extra steps into the flow of currency generally makes the currency harder to trace.īelow are the two main ways that in-game currency can provide cover for money laundering schemes. This helps in making the tracking of the currency more difficult because investing the currency into virtual currency is not tracked by law enforcement and it adds an extra step into the flow of the currency. The basic premise of how bad actors use the in-game currency for money laundering schemes is simple: bad actors use real-world currency fraudulently to buy in-game currency. How money laundering in a video game works Their in-game currency is called V-bucks. This game will be touched on multiple times in this article as its in-game currency marketplace offers ample opportunity to be used for money laundering especially considering that there is no supervision of in-game currency purchasing. With more than 200 million people playing the game all over the globe, and nearly 68% of players reporting that they have bought in-game currency at an average rate of $85 per player, this is a sizable moneymaker for maker Epic Games. Its in-game currency is not some small-time marketplace either. It has seemed to attract more attention from bad actors, so it deserves its own section. While technically a free-to-play game, Fortnite offers an in-game currency environment for players to pay their hard-earned dollars into.
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