Following the match-fixing incident in the North American CS:GO league ESEA, the ESIC bans three players involved in the scandal after several months of investigation
The Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) reports 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 match-fixing via a published voice recording. All three players received concrete bans from ESIC-supported CS:GO events as punishment this Monday.
Compulsory suspension for 5 years
The punished players are alleged to have played for Team Rebirth at the affected event, according to the ESIC’s investigation report. In Season 35 of the North American ESEA Premier, the three are alleged to have engaged in match-fixing and betting fraud. At the time of the incident, the ESIC preventively banned all players involved, but now the punishments have been specified. Those affected and punished are as follows:
– Sebastian “retchy” Tropiano: 5-year ban, commenced 2 April 2021
– Kevin “4pack” Przypasniak: 5-year ban, started 2 April 2021
– Carson “nosraC” O’Reilly: 111-day ban, began April 2, 2021 (served)
According to the ESIC report, the sanctions result from the fact that retchy and 4pack stand out as the main perpetrators of the fraud in the convicting voice recording. nosraC had only been involved with one sentence and therefore received a much shorter ban. A transcript of the recorded conversation was provided by the US news portal Dust2 at the time.
The bans of the three players refer to partner organisations of the ESIC, namely for example the ESL, DreamHack, WePlay, LVP, BLAST as well as Relog Media. However, in the report, the ESIC explicitly asks all other tournament organisers to respect the bans accordingly. For the banned players, the years-long compulsory break means nothing less than the probable professional end through exclusion from the central tournaments of Esports.
