Gambling in Counter-Strike has become a massive source of entertainment for a large portion of the game’s player base. The availability of skin trading has allowed gambling to exist in the community, and players enjoy the thrill of staking their money and skins in hopes of earning more.
Though players partake in gambling activities at will, there is still potential for these third-party gambling sites and public figures to pull some strings and take advantage of gamblers in the scene. Such scenarios have unfortunately happened in the Counter-Strike gambling industry. In this article, we’ll go over the two biggest CSGO gambling scams in the game’s history.
CSGOLotto – TmarTn and ProSyndicate
By far, the largest CSGO skin gambling scandal revolves around two popular YouTubers, TmarTn and ProSyndicate, who have millions of subscribers and followers on their social media pages. Let’s uncover what happened in this incident.
CSGOLotto Background
When CSGO gambling was at its peak from 2015 to 2016, a lot of third-party groups started to take interest and began pitching in by making their own online CSGO gambling websites. A handful of them emerged, but a website called CSGOLotto was gaining a lot of traction and quickly became one of the largest websites in the industry.
Nowadays, most CSGO gambling sites are focused on Player vs. House game modes such as Roulette, Crash, and Case Openings, but CSGOLotto is mainly focused on Player vs. Player game modes such as Jackpot. To turn in a profit, CSGOLotto would take a small percentage cut for every round played.
Jackpot was by far the most popular game mode on CSGOLotto and the primary reason why so many people played on it. In this game mode, players can deposit skins into a pot. The more money a player pitches in, the higher their chances of winning. Once the pot is closed, a random winner will be drawn who will sweep the entire pot.
Influencers Come Into Play
To advertise and market their website to the public, CSGOLotto would invite influencers such as YouTubers and Twitch streamers to play on the website and show this sort of content to their fans. These content creators would show themselves playing on the website and win tens of thousands of dollars in front of their fans.
Among these content creators, two of the biggest players on the website were YouTubers TmarTn and ProSyndicate, who have millions of subscribers on their YouTube channels. These two individuals were winning tons of money through playing the Jackpot game mode on CSGOLotto, and the fans watching this content became inclined to start gambling in hopes of going big like their favorite creators have.
The CSGOLotto Scandal
Generally, the CSGOLotto website wasn’t rigged for the general player base. However, it was odd that TmarTn and ProSyndicate were winning tons of pots like there was no tomorrow. After community members did some digging, it was then revealed with hard evidence that TmarTn and ProSyndicate were owners of the CSGOLotto website.
Now, it is pretty normal for content creators to try running their own gambling websites – there’s nothing wrong with that. However, the problem was that these two YouTubers essentially acted like they were regular players on the website, and never disclosed the fact that they owned it.
Obviously, a lot of strings can be pulled behind the scenes if you’re playing on your own gambling website, which is why massive drama stirred in the community when it was revealed that the two content creators had part ownership of the website.
The funniest part in all of this is that TmarTn and ProSyndicate had registered their real names under the business, so the proof was undeniable.
What Were The Main Issues?
Well, it is pretty obvious that there are many wrongs when two influencers play on their own gambling sites for real money, but let’s uncover their wrongdoings one by one.
First of all, there was a clear lack of transparency. Both TmarTn and ProSyndicate looked like they were having a jolly time playing on the CSGOLotto website, winning thousand-dollar pots in front of all their fans watching their live streams and videos. Instead of being a regular employee on the website, they were literally the owners, so the problem was even bigger.
Though there is no solid proof for this claim, who knows if TmarTn and ProSyndicate had rigged any of their Jackpot rounds in their favor. They could easily be live on stream and have their employees rig the games for them – we’ll never know. However, with everything revealed, it wouldn’t be too surprising if they were rigging games in their favor.
Still, if they did rig rounds, it would be an incredibly huge problem. If they were playing Player vs. House games such as Roulette or Crash, then their winnings would essentially go back to the business anyway. However, in Player vs. Player game modes, they would be unfairly stealing money from legitimate players who are using their own money.
Another massive problem is their viewer base. The two YouTubers became famous for producing family friendly content, meaning the majority of their fanbase were children under the age of 18. This meant they were essentially advertising and promoting gambling to a young audience, which has led to avid cases of underage gambling.
What Happened To His Gambling Site?
With such a scandal occurring, it was only natural that the situation spiraled, leading TmarTn and ProSyndicate to face legal challenges. As a result, their website was immediately shut down not too long after their ownership was revealed to the public.
As expected, the pair did not dare to reopen the website again, so CSGOLotto has been inactive for the past eight years and has disappeared from the CSGO gambling industry for good.
How Are TmarTn And ProSyndicate Now?
With them being such famous YouTubers, it was inevitable that their reputation and image as content creators were scarred as they were essentially scamming their fans by not disclosing they were the owners of CSGOLotto.
However, for some miraculous reason, the two did not serve any jail time. The details of the court case were not made public, but some fans speculated that the two found a loophole that helped them avoid being put behind bars.
Now, eight years later, they have completely excluded themselves from the Counter-Strike community. TmarTn is no longer uploading on YouTube, as his last video was released four years ago. However, ProSyndicate is still actively uploading, and is approaching 10 million subscribers on YouTube.
iBUYPOWER Match-Fixing Scandal
Another one of the largest CSGO gambling scandals involved the North American professional Counter-Strike team iBUYPOWER. Despite being one of the best teams in the region and a serious global competitor, the iBUYPOWER members got greedy and threw a match for skins.
CSGO Match Betting Background
In the CSGOLotto scandal, we were talking about CSGO Jackpot gambling. However, there is another subcategory of CSGO gambling, which is called match betting. In match betting, bettors are essentially placing their wagers on the outcomes of a professional match. In other words, you are betting on which team will win a match.
Now, it is obvious that some teams are better than others. This is why match betting follows an “odds” system. The likeliness of a team winning a match will determine the bet multiplier a player can expect to receive from a victory. For example, betting on the heavy favorite will return you a profit of 15% of your initial bet, while betting on the heavy underdog will return you 500% of your initial bet.
iBUYPOWER vs. NetcodeGuides.com Context
On August 20, 2014, iBUYPOWER had an online match against team NetcodeGuides.com. Coming into this matchup, iBUYPOWER was pretty much the best North American team in the region, and they are also a top ten team in the world. On the other hand, team NetcodeGuides.com had inexperienced players and was overall a worse team.
This discrepancy in skill meant that the betting odds on NetcodeGuides.com were very high, meaning anyone who bet on them would win tons of money. Additionally, the match was a Best of 1 online match that had little to no importance. It wasn’t a Major qualification match or an elimination series in a big tournament – the series meant nothing to iBUYPOWER. With the reasons mentioned, the iBUYPOWER players had the bright idea to bet against themselves.
iBUYPOWER Loses 4-16 Despite Being Heavy Favorites
And so, the match was played. Despite everyone expecting iBUYPOWER to demolish NetcodeGuides.com, the former ended up losing the series and was blown out the other way.
The match was extremely weird, as the iBUYPOWER squad seemed like they weren’t trying to win at all. One of the players on the team, Josh “steel” Nissan, attempted to go for a knife kill at an inappropriate time, costing iBUYPOWER a round.
However, since the match wasn’t too important, most community members just shrugged it off and moved on, thinking the great iBUYPOWER roster was just messing around or having an off day.
The Truth Revealed
On January 16, 2015 – the next year after the incident happened, journalist Richard Lewis revealed that there were pieces of leaked evidence that implied multiple members of the iBUYPOWER roster were betting against themselves during the series against NetcodeGuides.com.
Richard Lewis worked together with a CS:GO Lounge employee (the most prominent match betting site at the time) and tracked down a number of unusually high bets placed by Duc “cud” Pham and dboorN, who were staff members of the iBUYPOWER team.
To add on to the situation, professional player Shahzeeb “ShahZaM” Khan also revealed that the founder of the NetcodeGuides.com team, Casey Foster, told him to place a bet on iBUYPOWER losing since the match was already set to be thrown in the first place. This hinted that Casey Foster communicated the throw with the iBUYPOWER members.
iBUYPOWER Players Get Banned
After this situation was brought to the public, Valve decided to place indefinite bans on four iBUYPOWER players, as well as the staff members involved in the throw as well.
Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham was the only member in the iBUYPOWER roster who was not banned from the incident. This was because he declined to receive his share of the profit from the throw. He then went on to become a Major winner with Cloud9. The iBUYPOWER players that received bans include the following players listed below.
- Sam “DaZeD” Marine
- Braxton “swag” Pierce
- Keven “AZK” Larivière
- Joshua “steel” Nissan
The founder of NetcodeGuides.com, Casey Foster, was also banished from the Counter-Strike scene.
This was the first massive incident of match-fixing which raised a lot of alarms about the vulnerability of the professional scene. Today, numerous other instances of match-fixing have also occurred, mostly in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 space where players aren’t making consistent income.
However, at the time, iBUYPOWER was a solid Tier 1 team. Their players received handsome salaries and had the skills to compete against the world’s best. These reasons are why the iBUYPOWER incident is the biggest match-fixing scandal in the scene to date.