Roblox US spy agencies spent US$5,800 without White House or congressional approval, its chiefs admit (Patreon)

Furore in Ro-Washington over potential revelations of a 1.8 million Robux slush fund

Current and former officials of the Roblox US government roleplay, nUSA, have expressed shock over claims that its intelligence agencies had secretly spent R$1.5 million — US$5,800 at Developer Exchange rates — without the knowledge or approval of the White House, Congress, and nUSA ownership team.

An investigation into allegations that nUSA’s spy agencies had been secretly running a slush fund led both the Director of National Intelligence, Dpatt, and their deputy, Chamber, to seemingly admit on Tuesday that they had, in fact, been running a previously undisclosed R$1.8 million black budget since August 2024 to fund the CIA, FBI, NSA, and DIA.

Reportedly making payments in excess of R$10,000 to multiple individuals, the two directors claimed in a request for comment that budgetary disbursements were made for, among other things, “personal stipends … contractor and analyst compensation … and operational expenditure.” They also claimed that a “standing share of the budget” funded Cipher, an AI-powered database that allowed its operatives to search for open-source details about specific players.

Two former Presidents, two members of the House Intelligence Committee, the Speaker of the House, the President pro Tempore, a former Director of National Intelligence, a current nUSA owner, and a former nUSA owner have all denied knowledge of the alleged R$1.8M black budget. Many have expressed serious doubts over the veracity of the spy chiefs’ claims, including the existence of the budget itself.

The two directors emphasised that the budget was “entirely self-funded” from voluntary donations made by Chamber, nUSA’s deputy spy chief. They said that this revenue was generated from 14 Roblox games, a “substantial share” of which being “moneti[s]ed on a pay-to-win basis.”

In response to further requests for comment, Chamber has published additional figures, including month-by-month breakdowns of consolidated revenues and expenditures of the four intelligence agencies. They also published a heavily redacted screenshot purportedly showing disbursements made to individuals working for the intelligence community.

If the claims were true, it would mean that nUSA’s spy agencies had secretly accepted over 400,000 Robux in donations without the knowledge or approval of their former Director of National Intelligence, fuzzmike11, a figure cited by three sources as a competent administrator during their tenure. “It definitely sounds plausible,” Fuzzmike replied, “[But] I honestly am having a hard time believing all of this.”

Several sources have raised questions of the legality of the alleged donations. “If this was being done under my ownership, it would be ban worthy,” said one former nUSA owner. “While we allowed the community to use their own funds for their individual agencies … [the response by the directors] implies that they’re using these funds to conduct sabotage against other groups, which could potentially violate Roblox [Terms of Service].” (To be clear, the two directors neither confirmed nor denied the funds were used for sabotage).

Other sources have also pointed out that Roblox’s Community Standards prohibit the payout of Robux “for anything other than compensation for collaborative content development.” The payment of “personnel stipends … contractor and analyst compensation … discretionary aid packages … and operational expenditure” may have fallen afoul of this rule.

“It’s common practice for directors who are willing to, to fund their department,” Director Dpatt replied, “Some departments used to pay for your uniform and stuff when that was required years ago … [every now and again] you’ll see departments fund things like activity.”

When asked whether the payment of salaries and enlistment incentives was against Roblox Terms of Service, Dpatt said they “never looked into it” and “never even heard that [it was against Roblox ToS].” Deputy Director Chamber, meanwhile, said that “only paying people to play games is not allowed … Plenty of groups on Roblox pay salaries.”  

The Senate’s deputy chief, President pro Tempore AnthonyRBurgess, raised other concerns. “If someone has privately owned property paying money to a government agency … [C]ongress has to delegate those funds,” they said. “I mean, I appreciate the donation but … [t]hat property is practically paying taxes for no reason — or it’s bribery.”

Chamber has denied accusations of bribery. They said that their initial promotion to the post of CIA Director “was due to [them] being very successful in most of [their] operations.” They added the “president at the time wouldn’t even have known about the fund and therefore couldn’t use it to influence a hiring decision.” 

Analysis: If this is a disinformation campaign, it’s a self-defeating one

Intelligence agencies often exaggerate their capabilities. I should know — I’ve run one before. So when the Roblox Mossad director, Axelitis, gave me an on-the-record tip that nUSA’s CIA may have been running a budget to the tune of US$23,400 a year — 3 million Robux and US$15,000 — I was immediately sceptical.

Axelitis had learnt of this information in a confidential group chat with Director Dpatt, Deputy Director Chamber, and CIA Director Crusadersz, who originally made outlandish claims about the extent and source of their funding. 

Chamber, for instance, claimed that the CIA gave them 58,700 Robux for “one operation,” posting this screenshot as purported evidence. After multiple requests for comment, we now know this couldn’t be true — Chamber themselves admitted to being the sole donor of the alleged black budget, so unless they were paying themselves with their own money, that was obviously a lie.

What other claims have these directors made in that group chat? Crusadersz said they “got 170K [Robux] for one op [operation].” Chamber said “We have our own collection of CIA groups that make us revenue [a]nd we embezzle it all [j]ust like IRL [in real-life].” Dpatt, meanwhile, was the source of that US$23,400 a year claim.

But it didn’t take the group long to climb down from their maximalist claims. In a separate direct message to Axelitis just 30 minutes later, Dpatt admitted that they “were larping,” adding that their “budget isn’t that high.” They also said that the budget wasn’t really used much “[m]inus for big ops.”

And then, in response to my request for comment (a copy of which has been attached to this post), Dpatt and Chamber jointly clarified that the black budget was more like R$1 million a year for all four of its spy agencies — a number that seems far more reasonable.

But why should we trust anything that the two directors say? Surely, the telling of provable lies and the U-turning on previous statements should obliterate the two’s credibility?

Indeed, three former Presidents have speculated that these claims are being made to masquerade the state of a dying roleplay far past its prime. “Truly the current state of nUSA is low quality and inactive compared to previous times so I’m not even sure where they’d be spending this money,” former President blanket said, “There’s no way it happened behind me and [Director of National Intelligence] mikes back.”

“NUSA as it is now is not what it once was and has dropped off tremendously … NUSA doesn’t have 1 million robux on the [intelligence community] … the group is hanging on a thread,” a different president added.

But if this is genuinely a disinformation campaign — and no such black budget ever existed — it’s an entirely self-defeating one.

For one, these campaigns require an element of truth to be believable. I doubt sharing intimate details of and access to its seemingly vibecoded in-house database, Cipher, ostensibly to show off to Mossad officials how large nUSA’s non-existent coffers were, could ever be worth it.

Based even on limited screenshots of Cipher’s inner workings, a significant amount of information can be gleaned about nUSA’s intelligence-gathering processes. For example, in a screenshot about alt account clusters, the software provided various reasons why it flagged certain accounts as potentially being owned by the same person:

Accounts were created 0-21 days apart

Accounts joined the same group 0-2 days of each other

Accounts shared the “same username stem”

In a different screenshot, we could see factors that were considered by the AI when providing a risk assessment of certain players, including:

Whether they hold positions in multiple ro-nations (which could indicate potential infiltration),

Whether they reached a high-ranking position within a short period of time (which could indicate potential fast-tracking),

Whether they had reciprocal promotions with another player (which could indicate potential collusion with that other player)

Even if these weren’t the full capabilities of Cipher — which the spy chiefs would undoubtedly claim — it’s going to be incredibly hard to justify sharing crucial intelligence on how Cipher’s AI identifies alt accounts and operational risk (among many other details shared) as being remotely worth it to maintain the illusion of a black budget.

And even if it was justified, it begs the question — what was this done for? What would be the purpose of lying about a large Roblox CIA slush fund?

If it was done to intimidate their Mossad counterparts, that certainly hasn’t worked. All the revelations appear to have done was enamour Mossad officials with the need to have a Robux budget of their own. If the black budget truly was illusory, it may end up being the Foxbat that led to the F-15 — a misconception that leads nUSA’s adversaries to develop actual Robux budgets to counter its perceived financial firepower.

If it was done to impress their Mossad counterparts, it’s backfired spectacularly. So thoroughly won over by America’s apparent show of its intelligence capabilities, the Mossad director was willing to go on-the-record to tell me all about them, completely burning bridges with their American counterparts in the process, and leaving them with an ensuing political firestorm to deal with.

If it was done to grab attention — such as from me — it’s done that a bit too well. A false confession about spending 1.5 million Robux without White House, congressional, or ownership approval — potentially in an unlawful and Terms of Service-violating way — is bound to draw the ire of Ro-Washington. Perhaps the three intelligence chiefs planned to go out in a blaze of glory — but if that were the case, I must ask why they decided to progressively diminish their alleged accomplishments when I kept asking more questions, instead of maintaining the higher numbers they cited in the past.

I’m inclined, therefore, to believe that the black budget does exist — even if the precise numbers of income and expenditure remain up in the air — not least because there are genuine reasons for why a Roblox intelligence agency would need to spend that kind of money.

AI tokens aren’t free — and neither is self-hosting a large language model, as Dpatt claimed was the case for Cipher. Maintenance of so-called “alt banks” aren’t free — as both blanket and AnthonyRBurgess pointed out, the creation of convincing enough sockpuppets requires spending Robux to buy them items.

When I asked why Chamber chose to disclose all of this now, they explained that they thought the gig was up based on my line of questioning, so they thought to be upfront about it. They’d previously hidden their donations from as many players as possible because they simply didn’t want people to beg them for money. That included the White House, Congress, and nUSA ownership, who they maintained had no right to know or conduct oversight because it was their money. These weren’t congressionally-appropriated funds, they argued.

I think this is a plausible explanation. You’re free to draw your own conclusions.