X sues Bitcoin account operators over alleged $278,000 payout fraud

Elon Musk-owned social media platform X filed a lawsuit in the High Court of England and Wales on Thursday against Vivek Kumar Sen, Zamyang Sherpa and unidentified account operators. X alleges that the defendants fraudulently obtained at least 207,384 British pounds ($278,000) from its creator revenue-sharing program by manipulating engagement. The court filing is available on X's Transparency Center. X says the network coordinated multiple accounts by reposting and liking one another's content and publishing identical or substantially similar posts, creating what it described as a false appearance of genuine human communication and interaction. The lawsuit identifies six accounts enrolled in the program: @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy, @saylordocs, @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest and @PolyBackTest. The filing links Stripe accounts associated with the first three profiles to Sen and those associated with the other three to Sherpa. The accounts joined the program between August 2023 and February 2026. X also named @BTC_Vibes, @MrSuperBitcoin and @Laserlump, alleging that they repeatedly liked, replied to and reposted content from the defendants' accounts to manufacture engagement. Under X's former creator revenue-sharing program, eligible creators received a share of platform revenue based on engagement their posts generated from other users. X cited an Aug. 5 example in which @Vivek4real_ and @TrendingBitcoin allegedly published substantially similar posts within 11 seconds of each other. X suspended the accounts on Aug. 18 over what it called creator revenue-sharing fraud and platform manipulation. The company retired the revenue-sharing program on Sept. 7 and began rolling out access to its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the following day. X expects at least 75,000 British pounds ($100,000) in investigation and remediation costs, bringing its claimed and projected losses to at least 282,384 pounds ($378,000) before interest and legal costs. Cointelegraph sought comment through an email address linked to Sen in the filing but had not received a response by publication. Sherpa could not be reached for comment.