A woman in the UK was arrested after manufacturing fraudulent purchases to embezzle money from her employer, with hundreds of thousands of dollars going toward buying gifts for streamers on TikTok. She’s since been sentenced to over 2 years in prison.
She purposely manipulated financial reports to funnel money into her own bank account. She started small, taking a couple hundred dollars here or there and altering the records to make it look like that money essentially disappeared.
It got to the point where her employer became suspicious. The company was losing a massive amount of money, but no one could figure out why.
As it turns out, 29 year-old Katherine Greenall had stolen a grand total of £443,523, around $601,000 USD, from her employer over the course of a few years. The amount of money she stole and spent is enough to potentially sink the company she worked for and may result in layoffs. And most of it went to TikTok.
Woman secretly stole money for years to spend on TikTok
Greenall’s employer approached her about the issue on May 1, 2025, unaware that she was the one funneling funds into her bank account. She promised to look into it before taking another £20,000 and disappearing.
While she spent around £142,000 on conventional purchases like parties for relatives, vacations, groceries, and other luxury goods, the rest of this money went straight to TikTok.
She’d buy TikTok coins and use them to donate to users on the platform, sending them gifts that’d show up when they’re streaming.
According to court reports, she spent £301,162 on TikTok coins, or around $408,000 USD. She essentially took her company’s earnings and used them to donate to streamers.
100 TikTok coins is worth around $1.04, meaning that she bought approximately 42,472,976 TikTok coins with company funds.
The lawyer defending her in court claimed that she was “suffering from a form of addiction to TikTok”, but this defense didn’t hold up in court. The judge acknowledged that spending money on the platform may have been an “escape” for her, but they still sentenced her to 28 months behind bars for her crimes.
