X has sued two of its own users in London, claiming they ran a cluster of Bitcoin accounts as one operation in order to manufacture engagement and collect payouts from the platform’s now-defunct Creator Revenue Sharing program.
The particulars of claim, filed September 17 in the High Court of Justice, name Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa as defendants, along with “persons unknown” alleged to have controlled additional handles. X said the scheme produced “not less than £207,384” (about $278,000) in program payments and that it spent, or expects to spend, at least £75,000 investigating and shutting it down.
X and xAI General Counsel James Burnham put the company’s position in public on Sunday.
Last week, @X sued several people who abused Creator Revenue Sharing by operating a coordinated network of accounts, posting inauthentic content to manipulate engagement, and using multiple bank accounts to hide their scheme.
We do not tolerate fraudulent behavior on X — and…
— James Burnham (@BurnhamDC) September 20, 2026
“Last week, @X sued several people who abused Creator Revenue Sharing by operating a coordinated network of accounts, posting inauthentic content to manipulate engagement, and using multiple bank accounts to hide their scheme,” Burnham wrote. “We do not tolerate fraudulent behavior on X — and will act forcefully to protect our platform and the earnings of genuine creators.”
The allegations have not been tested in court, and neither Sen nor Sherpa has filed a public defense as of Monday.
How the Fake Engagement Scheme Allegedly Worked
Six handles were enrolled in Creator Revenue Sharing between August 2023 and February of this year, according to X’s court filing: @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy, @saylordocs, @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest, and @PolyBackTest. The company also lists @BTC_Vibes, @MrSuperBitcoin, and @Laserlump as supporting accounts that liked, replied to, and reposted the main group’s posts. The complaint describes the whole set as one network whose purpose was to keep payouts flowing even if a single account got restricted.
The content on these accounts would be familiar to anyone who has come across the notoriously annoying news aggregators on X, especially those that focus on crypto. All-caps “BREAKING” posts about what Michael Saylor just said about bitcoin, or what SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said about the potential passage of the CLARITY Act (which failed a crucial vote in the Senate last week) were par for the course. One cluster of screenshots shows multiple accounts posting the same red bitcoin price chart with the line “LIKE, IF YOU ARE NOT SELLING.”
X says those accounts posted identical or near-identical copy within minutes of each other, and in one case 11 seconds. The company also says the accounts liked, reposted, and replied to one another to create “a false appearance of genuine, human communication.” The supporting handles left short replies such as “Massive,” “Bullish” and “That’s massive,” then amplified the larger accounts.
X further claims Sen used @Vivek4real_ to shop for more reach. In a December message quoted in the claim, he asked a third party about buying that person’s account, and suggested moving the conversation off X. “Can we continue on another channel, please as you haven’t enabled encrypted chat and I don’t want us to get in trouble for something X doesn’t allow,” Sen allegedly wrote. “If you can understand what I mean.” The filing also says Sen used that same account to offer paid engagement-manipulation services to other users.
In terms of payments, X says the money from the Creator Revenue Sharing program did not all land under names that matched the public faces of the handles. The largest sums tied to @Vivek4real_, @saylordocs, and @Bitcoin_Teddy are listed as going to Sen, while @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest, and @PolyBackTest are listed under Sherpa. The complaint also flags a @Bitcoin_Teddy Stripe profile in the name “Stefan Mann,” whose bank account and email sat with Sen, plus a Sen-linked email on a Sherpa-named Stripe setup for @PolyBackTest.
The filing says the defendants live in Preston, Lancashire, but that Premium subscriptions for some of the accounts were billed to Delaware addresses. X also claims the accounts shared devices, software clients, cookies, device tokens, and universally unique identifiers.
An X Crackdown on Recycled Content
X says it suspended the accounts on August 18 for “coordinated revenue sharing fraud and platform manipulation.” That was the same day former X product lead Nikita Bier publicly alleged that one operator was running more than 10 profiles and had pulled more than $250,000 from revenue sharing over two years. Bier wrote that the matter was being referred to law enforcement.
Got him. https://t.co/9JyD1M98pW
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) September 21, 2026
Bier’s post was part of a broader enforcement sweep against crypto aggregator accounts as X prepared to shut the old payout system and better reward original content creators. The original Creator Revenue Sharing program paid a slice of platform revenue based on engagement. X has spent much of the past year trying to claw the program back from engagement bait, copied clips, and recycled “BREAKING” posts, including an overhaul that closed the old program to new applicants and replaced it with Original Content Rewards.
The old program stopped taking new enrollments in August and stopped accruing earnings on September 7. The replacement pays against narrower definitions of original work and “qualified impressions” from Premium users on the Home timeline.
What X Wants From the Court
X is asking the court for a return of the funds paid to the accounts through Creator Revenue Sharing; damages for deceit, unlawful means conspiracy, and breach of contract; equitable compensation; restitution; interest; and costs. The company says the conduct did more than move money out of a finite creator pool. In the loss section of the claim, it argues the accounts pushed low-quality content into the timeline and made legitimate participation in the program less attractive.
Whether copy-paste posts and fake engagement amount to fraud, rather than just the sloppiest version of Crypto Twitter, is now a matter for the court to decide.
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