ESIC takes action following CS:GO scandal in North America

Author

Gullu

Date

Sep, 08.2021

Following the match-fixing incident in the North American CS: GO league ESEA, the ESIC banned three players who were involved in the scandal after several months of investigation.
The Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) is back after four and a half months of investigation into the match-fixing scandal last April. In the course of this, three players from the North American CS: GO league ESEA Premier were caught planning the match-fixing by means of a published voice recording. As a punishment, all three players received specific bans for ESIC-supported CS: GO events on Monday.

Compulsory break for 5 years
According to the investigation report by ESIC, the punished players are said to have played for Team Rebirth at the affected event. In season 35 of the North American ESEA Premier, the three are said to have proven match-fixing and, in this context, betting fraud. At the time of the incident, ESIC preventively banned all players involved, but the penalties have now been specified. Affected and punished as follows:

Sebastian “ retchy ” Tropiano: 5-year ban, started on April 2nd, 2021
Kevin “ 4pack ” Przypasniak: 5-year ban, started April 2, 2021
Carson " Costa " O'Reilly: 111-day ban, began April 2, 2021 (served)
According to the ESIC report, the sanctions result from the fact that in the convicting voice recording mainly retchy and 4pack stand out as the main culprits for the fraud. Costa was only involved with one sentence and therefore experienced a significantly shorter ban. A transcript of the recorded entertainment was made available by the US news portal Dust2 at the time.

The bans for the three players relate to partner organizations of ESIC, namely, for example, ESL, DreamHack, WePlay, LVP, BLAST, and Relog Media. However, in the report, ESIC explicitly asks all other tournament organizers to respect the bans accordingly. For the banned players, the compulsory break for years means nothing less than the probable professional end due to the exclusion from central esports tournaments.