We all made mistakes when we were teenagers, but this kid is like no other. Over two weeks, he spent all the Rs 15 lakh in his parents’ savings on donations for gamers on Twitch. The worst thing is that his parents didn’t allow or even know about this.
His mother, who remained anonymous to protect her son’s identity, said that the teenage boy charged Rs 14,89,674 ($19,870.94) to a debit card from June 14 to June 30. She tried to get the money back but failed and resorted to asking for advice on Reddit.
She posted her question on the Twitch subreddit and received a bunch of knowledge she wished she had known before. The post exploded and got hundreds of responses from users on the platform.
According to the poor mother, the donations went to popular streamers on Twitch such as Ewokttv, Gorb, and Tfue, among some other popular figures. She shared a screengrab of her bank statement, which shows a total amount of nearly Rs 15 lakh in spending, including several big numbers sent to Twitch. She recalled:
“When I saw the bank balances were almost gone, my lips started to tingle and I had to put my head down so I wouldn’t pass out. I cried at first. I didn’t believe he could’ve done this.”
It turned out that the mother gave her son a debit card with a nominal balance for buying lunches at school. Then, he started transferring money from her account into his card for his donations via online banking. She believes he might have seen the password or she might have not logged out of her account properly.
When she confronted him about this, he was shocked to know how much he had spent though he knew it was a large amount. In addition to that, the mother only checked the balance in the account twice a month when she paid bills, so she knew nothing until it was too late.
After finding out, she contacted the bank and had all the accounts frozen and her son’s card canceled. She reached out to five streamers to get the money back as well, but only Leonard and Benkert responded.