Social network X has filed a lawsuit in the High Court of England and Wales against two men it accuses of running a network of fake Bitcoin news accounts. The platform says they collected at least 207,384 pounds ($278,000) from its creator revenue-sharing program. The claim was filed on Thursday, and X published the text of the filing in its Transparency Center.
Who X is suing and why
The defendants are Vivek Kumar Sen, Zamyang Sherpa and unidentified account operators. X is represented by the law firm Lewis Silkin LLP, and the particulars of the claim were signed by the company's senior legal directors Diego de Lima Gualda and Adam Mehes. The Block describes the defendants as a UK duo.
X asks the court to order repayment of the money the accounts earned in the program and to award damages for fraud and conspiracy. On top of the 207,384 pounds in payouts, the platform adds 75,000 pounds (about $100,000) in investigation and remediation costs. Claimed and projected losses come to at least 282,384 pounds before interest and legal costs.
Cointelegraph emailed the address that the filing links to Sen but received no reply. Sherpa could not be reached.
How the account network worked
The lawsuit names nine accounts. Six of them were enrolled in the revenue-sharing program, namely @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy, @saylordocs, @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest and @PolyBackTest. They joined between August 2023 and February 2026. Three more accounts, @BTC_Vibes, @MrSuperBitcoin and @Laserlump, allegedly only liked, replied to and reposted the posts of the others.
Under the former rules, creators received a share of platform revenue based on how other users engaged with their posts. According to CoinDesk, the accounts published near-identical "breaking news" headlines within seconds of one another. On Aug. 5, @Vivek4real_ and @TrendingBitcoin posted similar entries 11 seconds apart. The filing describes this activity as creating a "false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction."
The headlines usually involved big names in finance. In one, the CEO of Goldman Sachs was pushing a crypto bill, in another Citibank had bought $12.6 million in bitcoin. X calls such claims unsubstantiated.
What X points to as evidence
Payouts went through Stripe accounts, and those are what tie the profiles together, according to X. The filing lists these details:
- payment details of the first three profiles are linked to Sen, the other three to Sherpa
- the Stripe accounts carried mismatched owner names
- the profiles share devices and login identifiers
- in one case a payment was registered to Stefan Mann, while the bank account and email belonged to Sen
The filing also says @Vivek4real_ expanded the scheme. It offered paid engagement services to third parties and tried to buy more accounts with large followings. In a message to the owner of one such profile, Sen, as quoted in the claim, asked to move to another channel.
"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. If you understand what I mean."
Vivek Kumar Sen, message to a prospective account seller, quoted in X's court filing
What changed in the payout program
X retired the revenue-sharing program on Sept. 7 and began rolling out access to its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the next day. The claim was filed only on Thursday, so there is no court ruling yet. The platform has not put a monetary figure on part of the additional investigation costs.
The timeline in the case papers is short. On Aug. 5 two accounts posted similar entries 11 seconds apart, on Aug. 18 X terminated all linked profiles, on Sept. 7 it retired the old program, and on Sept. 17 it filed the claim. On Monday, when media reported the lawsuit, the price of Bitcoin touched $85,000 for the first time since January, according to CoinDesk.
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