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Children go live on the social media app for hours, begging for digital gifts of monetary value.
The BBC saw streams earning up to $1,000 (£900) an hour, but found that people in the camps were only getting a tiny fraction of that.
TikTok said it would take swift action against "exploitative begging".
The company said this type of content is not allowed on its platform and its commission on digital gifts is well below 70%. But he refused to confirm the exact amount.
Earlier this year, TikTok users saw their feeds flooded with live streams of families in Syrian camps, garnering support from some viewers and fears of fraud from others.
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In camps in north-west Syria, the BBC found that the trend was being aided by so-called "TikTok middlemen" who provided families with phones and equipment to start living.
The intermediaries said they worked with TikTok-affiliated agencies in China and the Middle East, which gave families access to TikTok accounts. These agencies are part of TikTok's global strategy to recruit live streams and encourage users to spend more time on the app.
Children live for hours begging for gifts on TikTok
image caption,
Children live for hours begging for gifts on TikTok
Because TikTok's algorithm suggests content based on the geographic origin of a user's phone number, the brokers said they prefer to use UK SIM cards. People from Great Britain are said to be the most generous givers.
Mona Ali Al-Karim and her six daughters belong to a family that lives on TikTok every day, sitting for hours on the floor of their tent and repeating a few English phrases they know: "Please like, please share, please gift."
Mona's husband was killed in an airstrike, and she uses the live broadcasts to raise money for an operation for her daughter Sharifa, who is blind.
The gifts they ask for are virtual but cost viewers real money and can be cashed out from the app. Livestream viewers send gifts — from digital roses that cost a few cents to virtual lions worth around $500 — as rewards or tips to content creators.
The BBC spent five months monitoring 30 TikTok accounts that broadcast live from Syrian camps for displaced people and created a computer program to scrape information from them, showing that viewers often donated digital gifts worth up to $1,000 an hour to each account .
However, families in the camps reported receiving only a tiny fraction of these amounts.
Since TikTok refused to say how much it takes in donations, the BBC conducted an experiment to track where the money goes.
A reporter from Syria contacted one of the agencies affiliated with TikTok and said he was living in camps. He got an account and went live while BBC staff in London sent $106 worth of TikTok gifts from another account.
At the end of the live stream, the Syrian test account balance was $33. TikTok took 69% of the value of the gifts.
TikTok influencer and former professional rugby player Keith Mason donated 300 pounds ($330) during a live stream of one family and encouraged his nearly one million followers to do the same.
When the BBC said most of the funds were taken by a social media company, he said it was "ridiculous" and "unfair" to families in Syria.
"You have to have some transparency. To me, it's very greedy. It's greed," he said.
The remaining $33 of the $106 BBC gift was reduced by a further 10% when withdrawn from a local money transfer shop. TikTok's middlemen would take 35% of the rest, leaving the family with just $19.
Hamid, one of the TikTok facilitators in the camps, told the BBC he sold his cattle to pay for a mobile phone, SIM card and Wi-Fi connection to work with families on TikTok.
He now broadcasts with 12 different families for several hours a day.
Hamid said he uses TikTok to help families earn a living. He pays them most of the profits, minus his operating costs, he said.
Like other intermediaries, Hamid said he is backed by "live agencies" in China that work directly with TikTok.
"They help us when we have some problems with the app. They unlock blocked accounts. We give them the page name, profile picture and they open the account," Hamid said.