In a major crackdown on engagement farming and platform manipulation, Elon Musk’s X has filed a lawsuit against a coordinated network of Bitcoin-focused accounts, seeking to recover hundreds of thousands in fraudulently obtained creator payouts.
In a decisive move to protect its monetization ecosystem, the social media giant X (formerly Twitter) has initiated legal action against a network of Bitcoin influencers. Filed in the High Court of Justice in England and Wales on September 17, the lawsuit alleges that the operators orchestrated a sophisticated bot network to fraudulently extract at least £207,384 (approximately $278,000) from the platform’s Creator Revenue Sharing Program.
The legal action targets named defendants Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa, along with several unidentified individuals. This high-profile case sheds light on the dark side of social media monetization and highlights the ongoing battle between tech platforms and malicious actors looking to exploit algorithmic incentive structures.
According to the court filings, the defendants allegedly operated a tight-knit network of six primary accounts: @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy, @saylordocs, @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest, and @PolyBackTest. These profiles enrolled in the platform’s revenue-sharing initiative between August 2023 and February 2026.
Rather than building organic audiences through authentic content, the defendants are accused of deploying a highly coordinated engagement strategy. X claims that the network systematically posted identical or substantially similar Bitcoin-related content within minutes—and sometimes seconds—of each other.To trigger the platform’s monetization algorithms, the accounts continuously engaged with one another by aggressively liking, reposting, and replying to their own cluster of posts.
The lawsuit highlights specific instances of this coordinated behavior. For example, on August 5, 2026, two of the primary accounts shared almost identical posts just 11 seconds apart.X described this orchestrated activity as creating a “false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction,” intentionally designed to inflate their share of the creator payouts.
To further obscure the operation, the operators allegedly used auxiliary accounts to continuously amplify the main profiles.Furthermore, financial records submitted to the court linked the Stripe accounts of the first three primary profiles directly to Sen, while the remaining three were traced to Sherpa, utilizing mismatched bank account names in an attempt to obscure the flow of funds.
The financial toll of the alleged manipulation was substantial. Between the six main accounts, the network purportedly siphoned over a quarter of a million dollars from the creator fund. The @Vivek4real_ account alone allegedly extracted over £74,000, while @saylordocs brought in roughly £49,000.
X suspended the implicated accounts on August 18 for violating platform manipulation and revenue-sharing fraud policies. The company is now aggressively seeking restitution. Beyond the £207,384 in fraudulently obtained payouts, X is demanding compensation for at least £75,000 (roughly $100,000) in costs related to investigating, analyzing, and remediating the fraud.Factoring in damages, interest, and ongoing legal fees, the final financial penalty could be devastating for the defendants.
The lawsuit arrives at a pivotal transitional moment for X’s monetization strategy. The original Creator Revenue Sharing Program—which compensated users based on total engagement metrics—had been widely criticized across the crypto community for incentivizing spam, engagement farming, and the theft of viral content.
Recognizing the flaws in this incentive structure, X officially wound down the legacy program on September 7, 2026. In its place, the platform has rolled out “Original Content Rewards,” a revamped system designed to compensate creators based on qualified impressions of genuinely unique content on the platform’s main timeline.The new guidelines explicitly prohibit the use of automated tools, bots, or coordinated networks to artificially generate engagement.
This lawsuit serves as a definitive warning shot to the broader “Crypto Twitter” ecosystem. For years, the intersection of cryptocurrency hype and algorithmic social media has been fertile ground for engagement farming and artificial network effects. By pursuing aggressive litigation in the UK High Court, X is demonstrating that it will no longer simply ban bad actors—it will actively hunt down stolen funds and prosecute the individuals behind the screens.
As the digital asset space matures, the days of profiting from low-effort, automated engagement rings appear to be numbered. For legitimate crypto creators, X’s legal offensive is a welcome step toward cleaning up the timeline and restoring authentic discourse to the industry’s premier public square.