Twitch streamers say one of them scammed them for gambling money

Several prominent Twitch streamers, including HasanAbi, are suing fellow streamer ItsSliker after he allegedly scammed them money to fuel what he describes as a gambling addiction. Over the weekend, streamers took to Twitch and Twitter, sharing voice messages, videos and DMs of the UK-based streamer begging them for money. He used known financial scam strategies, claiming that his bank account was frozen and that he needed money to pay bills and otherwise survive until his bank released the money. Sympathetic streamers would then send him large sums of money with the expectation that they would be repaid, but it would take months or sometimes years for the money to be repaid, if at all.

“seek help,” wrote Lacari, a Texas-based streamer who shared screenshots of Discord messages from 2021 between him and Sliker asking for $1,000. Lacari sent the money and requested Slicker to repay him a year later. Sliker appeared to refund the money, but Lacari later sent Sliker a message saying that the payment was never successful. Under Lacari’s tweet, several other streamers shared similar experiences of Sliker begging for money, receiving and then not refunding, with some instances where Sliker sent the refund and then canceled.

Many of Sliker’s victims came forward on Twitch, such as streamer lukeafkfan admit he lost $27,000 and Trainwreckstv said he was Sliker. gave about $45,000. xQc noted that he was also beaten for money but lent him nothing.

A tearful Sliker went to Twitch on September 17thadmitting that he has “borrowed” money from streamers.

“I’ve lied to a lot of people,” he said.

According to Sliker, his addiction started with: CS:GO skin betting. “I finally found out that you could gamble with money,” he explained. From there, he used the money he earned from streaming to support his sports betting habit, but that income wasn’t enough. He started asking for money, lying about why he needed the money, saying that he intends to pay people back.

HasanAbi, the popular political and variety streamer, got involved by making a phone call between himself, Sliker, and another content creator called Mizkif, in which he tried to get a refund for the scammed streamers.

Sliker seemed reluctant when asked if he would seek therapy, and Mizkif stated that he and other highest-earning streamers, including xQc and Ludwig, would use their wealth to repay Sliker’s victims.

While Sliker’s particular taste of addiction was sports betting, the incident sparked a conversation about gambling on Twitch’s platform. Currently, gambling streams are allowed on Twitch, with creators like the aforementioned xQc making headlines for the large amounts of money they spend and lose on stream. After the news about Sliker came out, high-profile streamers including Pokimane discussed a boycott of Twitch on stream to urge the platform to ban gambling from the site.

Ironically, that sentiment grew out of his own controversy. Marginalized content creators were quick to point out that some of the same streamers talk about the harm of gambling streams to the site and the community remained silent when asked for their support in boycotting Twitch in the face of prolific and violent hate attacks last year.

The edge reached out to Twitch and Sliker for comment. Currently, Sliker does not remain banned from the platform.