It’s come to light that a match that occurred in August, 2014 has been confirmed to being fixed at the time of play, which involved two North American Counter-Strike eSports teams during the CEVO Professional Season 5: iBUYPOWER and NetcodeGuides.com.
Accusations circulated that iBUYPOWER had somehow rigged the match in their favor due the sight of some of its team members going around for knife kills in some situations, who apparently laughed as they lost. The matter was initially shrugged off as lack of practice on the map and the team’s supposed timezone hanger from ESL One, but the day after the match it came to light it was allegedly rigged, and that iBUYPOWER were going to lose on purpose. ESports professional Shahzeb “ShahZam” Khan confirmed this at the time (then partnered with NetcodeGuides). but further supporting evidence regarding the specific match failed to come up until recently, where it was found out that multiple bets were placed, with wagers accumulating over $10,000. Eventually, Khan even provided a whole statement on the matter, confirming the whole thing. It seems that iBUYPOWER aimed to gain more money by influencing bets with multiple accounts.
“The day of this match I had placed a bet on iBUYPOWER. I brought up the bet while talking to [ NetcodeGuides’ founder] Casey Foster, he then voice-called me on Steam Friends and told me to change my bet. He made it very clear the match was going to be thrown. I didn’t want to get involved with any of it but I changed my bet, as I thought would be logical at the time while also sharing this information with a friend whom I assumed to have bet the same.”
Khan regrets not contacting league official first about what was going to happen, but didn’t have much faith they would’ve been believed in at the time. Eventually he was read to tell his story, but he first spoke with Foster about. Foster was in charge of Khan’s earnings for his partnership with NetcodeGuides, a partnership which Khan described as “ a joint venture by him and then iBUYPOWER Team Captain, Sam “DaZeD” Marine. ” The NetcodeGuides founder advised Khan not to reveal the story, as it would negatively impact the North American Counter-Strike: Global Offensive eSports scene and cause iBUYPOWER to lose their sponsorship.
“I was between a rock and a very hard place with the partnership I had with Netcode Guides, as it was my sole source of income for playing the game I love,” Khan continued.
So I denied everything, I stayed quiet, and at the end of the day I took the heat of the crosshairs when this first surfaced months back through an article very similar to this one. I know I wasn’t the only person to have known, but I was definitely in a position to do what was right and come forward with this information and I didn’t because I was scared. I’m sorry. I’ve never been involved with any type of match fixing and I never will be, neither would any of us at Cloud9.”
The evidence itself includes incriminating texts between a former girlfriend of and Torqued team member Derek “Dboorn” Boorn, who was a former member of iBUYPOWER. The texts themselves reveal Boorn’s apparent involvement with the rigging of the match, who confirmed that the match was indeed fixed and that he bet for the iBUYPOWER via alternate accounts. The text messages soon spread like wildfire on Reddit, but they were initially believed to be fake. However, with the aid of the ex-girlfriend herself, the texts’ authenticity were able to be confirmed. The texts themselves were sent couple of days before the match from a phone owned by Boorn. The involvement of Dc “cud” Pham was also mentioned, who also created multiple accounts and used each of them to play bets.
Further information on the incident can be read via the source link below.
[ Source: The Daily Dot ]
[ Via: VG24/7 ]