ESEA issues match fixing bans to effys, cardiac; cuts ties with StrongLegs
ESEA have just announced that it has found instances of gambling violations by Loic “effys” Sauvageau and Victor “cardiac” Kwan of Really Old People and by community caster Roy “StrongLegs” Ahad.
According to ESEA, the gambling service GG.BET approached the league after irregularities in bets placed on certain MDL matches were spotted. Supposedly, accounts registered under family members of Really Old People, and under the same IP as said players, placed bets against the team on the service and thereby bypassed automatic fraud filters.
As a result of this investigation, ESEA has banned the two players from the service for a full year and Really Old People have been booted from the MDL division. The team was originally slated to appear in MDL Season 29, after barely avoiding relegation in 15th place.
To fill Really Old People's former MDL slot, ESEA stated that it "will be made available via the relegation tournament to those teams who were negatively affected by their actions." Really Old People, however, are not allowed in participate in relegation or placement tournaments for Season 29.
Along with the two Canadian players, ESEA has also cut ties with StrongLegs, who also supposedly placed multiple bets on MDL matches within a similar timeframe to the other two players who were accused. Following the guidelines set by Valve for third-party organizers, ESEA has stated that StrongLegs will no longer be a part of the production staff for MDL coverage.
Following the allegation by ESEA, we briefly spoke to StrongLegs to get his side of the story. "This is all a huge misunderstanding," the Canadian caster told us. "I keep asking for evidence but they are refusing to give me anything."
Brett "few" Sheffield backed up ESEA's claims in the blog post's comments, claiming that they "confronted him about it and he admitted he placed the bets listed." On Twitter, StrongLegs has admitted to placing bets on the service, but denies any wrongdoing.
This is one of many controversies to come out of the ESEA offseason, following iNTACT not receiving an invite to MDL relegation and oNe being seeded against Big Frames in their first matchup in the MDL relegation tournament.
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