ESEA Advanced S53 Fast Track Qualifier embroiled in cheating scandal

On March 28th, the ESEA Advanced Season 53 Fast Track Qualifier was played out, seeing 113 teams compete for a single spot in ESEA Advanced Season 53. The qualifier serves as an accelerated path for new teams and established teams alike to skip the lower ESEA divisions and make their way into ESEA's top division.

Every season has its fair share of upsets and surprises as the Bo1 bracket is a brutal gauntlet for any team to run, however this season's qualifier has proved especially controversial as the winning's team "IIRILIIARILA" is the subject of serious cheating accusations and mass outcry from the the NA community.

One of the first posts to sound the alarm came from Cole "twigs" Morad of HS, the team that fell to IIRILIIARILA in the finals. In the post on X, twigs unabashedly alleged that "IIRILIIARILA" were "blatant pigshit cheaters" stating in a reply that the team were "so blatant its not even funny."

While twigs' post failed to offer any evidence it set the stage for a number of community members to post clips of the team that they found suspicious. Lucas "fatguy" Muncy posted a clip that allegedly shows LemooreOFF tracking a player through a smoke while August "MegaGeese" White shared a particularly damning clip that seemingly shows another player named "lockstock" (now known as awpg0d on FACEIT) locking onto a player through multiple walls and objects with his AWP after scoping in.

Adding on to the controversy, another account using the name lockstock is currently banned on FACEIT for cheating:

While this account is potentially an impersonator, it is worth noting that this FACEIT account competed in ESEA Advanced Season 50 EU before being banned, with Liquipedia's coverage of the event at the time suggesting this account openly played as lockstock back in 2024.

This banned FACEIT account links to a Steam profile that links to an HLTV account belonging to Valeriy "lockstock" Pekhterev. Dust2.us has confirmed with HLTV that Pekhterev has used two Steam accounts to play official matches that HLTV tracks: one dormant account that has been unused since CS2 released and the second being the "awpg0d" account that played the Fast Track qualifier and invited so much controversy last week:

While this is no way definitive evidence that the banned account belongs to Valeriy "lockstock" Pekhterev, the fact that three accounts, including one banned for cheating, are all tied to the same individual who appears to be ban evading is seriously concerning especially in light of the clips that were shown on X this weekend.

ESEA has taken no action against the members of IIRILIIARILA at the time of publication although Dust2.us understands there is an ongoing investigation at this time.