X sues Bitcoin account operators over alleged $278K payout fraud

X filed suit in the High Court of England and Wales alleging that two individuals and associated account operators ran a coordinated network of Bitcoin-focused profiles to inflate engagement and obtain payments from the company’s former creator revenue-sharing program. The complaint, which X published via its Transparency Center, names Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa and ties six enrolled accounts to those parties. According to the filing, the accounts — @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy, @saylordocs, @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest and @PolyBackTest — joined X’s revenue-sharing program between August 2023 and February 2026. X says Stripe accounts linked to the first three profiles are associated with Sen, while Stripe accounts for the latter three are associated with Sherpa. The company also alleges additional accounts repeatedly liked, replied to and reposted content from the defendants to create a misleading appearance of genuine interaction. X describes specific coordination, citing an August 5 instance in which two of the named accounts allegedly posted substantially similar content within 11 seconds of each other. The suit contends that such orchestration produced payouts to the defendants under the now-retired revenue-sharing program; X says it was fraudulently paid at least £207,384 (about $278,000) as a result. The platform suspended the implicated accounts on Aug. 18 for creator revenue-sharing fraud and manipulation, and X has since ended the original revenue-sharing program (retiring it on Sept. 7) while beginning rollout of a replacement called Original Content Rewards. In addition to seeking recovery of the alleged fraudulent payouts, X says it expects at least £75,000 (about $100,000) in investigation and remediation costs, bringing the company’s claimed and projected losses to at least £282,384 before interest and legal fees. Cointelegraph reported it had sought comment from an email address linked to Sen but had not received a response; Sherpa could not be reached for comment.