Elon Musk-owned social media platform X has sued the alleged operators of a network of Bitcoin-focused accounts, seeking to recover at least $278,000 in creator payouts it says they obtained by manipulating engagement.

The company filed the suit Thursday in the High Court of England and Wales against Vivek Kumar Sen, Zamyang Sherpa and unidentified account operators, alleging they fraudulently obtained at least 207,384 British pounds ($278,000) from X's creator revenue-sharing program. The court filing is available via X's Transparency Center.

According to the complaint, the defendants coordinated multiple accounts to boost engagement by reposting and liking one another's content and publishing identical or substantially similar posts, creating what the company described as a “false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.”

X said it suspended the accounts on Aug. 18 over what it called creator revenue-sharing fraud and platform manipulation.

Six accounts linked to two defendants

The lawsuit identifies six accounts enrolled in X's revenue-sharing program: @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy, @saylordocs, @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest and @PolyBackTest. Stripe accounts associated with the first three profiles are linked to Sen, while those tied to the other three are linked to Sherpa. The accounts joined the program between August 2023 and February 2026, according to the filing.

The alleged network extended beyond those six accounts. X named @BTC_Vibes, @MrSuperBitcoin and @Laserlump, claiming they repeatedly liked, replied to and reposted content from the defendants' accounts to manufacture engagement.

How the alleged scheme generated money

Under X's former creator revenue-sharing program, eligible creators received a share of the platform's revenue based on the engagement their posts generated from other users. That payout structure sits at the center of the case: because rewards were tied to activity from other users, engagement manufactured through coordinated accounts could translate directly into creator payouts, which is what the complaint alleges happened.

The filing cites an Aug. 5 example in which @Vivek4real_ and @TrendingBitcoin allegedly published substantially similar posts within 11 seconds of each other.

X retired the revenue-sharing program on Sept. 7 and began rolling out access to its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the following day. The suit lands mid-transition, as the platform moves creator monetization away from the engagement-based model the complaint targets.

In addition to the allegedly fraudulent payouts, X said it expects to incur at least 75,000 British pounds100,000) in investigation and remediation costs, bringing its claimed and projected losses to at least 282,384 pounds 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.

The allegations remain unproven, and the case now sits with the High Court, where X is pursuing claims against defendants that include operators who have yet to be identified.

This article was first published by Cointelegraph.