Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) says it’s taking legal action against banned users who tried to bribe employees to regain access to the site.
The company announced on Sept. 20 that the scheme involved suspended accounts tied to crypto scams and platform manipulation.
“X has exposed and is taking strong action against a bribery network targeting our platform,” the company wrote.
“Suspended accounts involved in crypto scams and platform manipulation paid middlemen to attempt to bribe employees to reinstate their suspended accounts.”
X is taking legal action against its employees for accepting crypto bribery. (Source: X)
According to X, the people behind the network weren’t just operating on its platform.
“These perpetrators exploit social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Minecraft, and Roblox and are linked to wider criminal organizations, including ‘The Com,’” the statement said. The company added that legal proceedings are underway and that it is fully cooperating with law enforcement.
Related: What is Crypto? Cryptocurrency explained
In July, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned about “a growing and evolving online threat group known as The Com.” The agency said the group, largely made up of minors, has spent the past four years refining its cyber-crime tactics.
“The sophistication of The Com criminal activity has grown over the last four years, with subjects employing increasingly complex methods to mask their identities, hide financial transactions, and launder money,” the FBI’s statement noted.
One reason crypto keeps surfacing in these scandals is because it’s the perfect payment tool for underground markets. It’s fast, borderless, and often anonymous, making it ideal for bribery schemes or account reinstatements where neither side wants a paper trail. Paying in Bitcoin, stablecoins, or privacy tokens lets scammers move money quickly and mask who’s really behind a transaction.
Notably, Illicit crypto activity in 2024 remained huge, with $40.9 billion worth of funds flowing to addresses identified as criminal, as per onchain analytics platform Chainalysis.
Chainalysis stresses that this figure is a lower-bound estimat. Once more illicit wallets are identified, the true total could exceed $51 billion. That would make 2024 one of the biggest years ever for crypto crime, even though it accounted for just 0.14% of overall transaction volume. The report highlights how professionalized the space has become, with networks offering laundering-as-a-service to other criminals.
X suspended 5.3 million accounts in the first half of 2024, according to the company’s transparency data. That figure was up from 3.9 million suspensions in the second half of 2023, showing how aggressively the platform has been moving against what it calls spam, scams, and harmful behavior.