How Criminals Use Fortnite to Launder Dirty Money

Organized crime is an almost ageless activity. For as long as there are rules to break, there are people to make a living doing so. But I wouldn't have thought it involved kids playing Fortnite.

According to a report by The Independent, Fortnite has become a popular option for money launderers. Using stolen credit cards and various other ill-gotten cash, they purchase the game's in-game currency V-Bucks. They then sell the V-Bucks online for a discounted rate.

The investigation that uncovered this was Cyber Security firm Sixgill. They discovered several Fortnite based laundering operations, with sellers working in a variety of counties and languages. Benjamin Preminger, senior intelligence analyst at Sixgill, had this to say:

Criminals are executing carding fraud and getting money in and out of the Fortnite system with relative impunity. Threat actors [a malicious person or entity] are scoffing at Epic Games weak security measures, saying that the company doesnt 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.

The process of purchasing digital goods and reselling them online is a common tactic for money laundering. This way, the illegal money is swapped out for the digital good, and exchange the digital good for "clean" money. While it's been around almost as long as the internet has, Fortnite's massive popularity has made it a premier target for the practice.

Traditionally, V-Bucks are used to purchase in-game cosmetics and animations for the player. They can only be acquired by purchasing them with real-world money.

Epic has not commented on this issue at this time.

Who even buys third party V-Bucks anyway?

UPDATE (1/17/19)

Epic Games has issued a formal response:

"Epic Games takes these issues seriously, as chargebacks and fraud put our players and our business at risk. [/size]As always, we encourage players to protect their accounts by turning on two-factor authentication, not re-using passwords and using strong passwords, and not sharing account information with others."[/size]