FBI Involved In CS:GO Match Fixing Investigations in North America

GAMEFINITY.ID, Jakarta – Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) Commissioner Ian Smith has revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is now involved in an investigation into the Counter-Strike match fixing scandal in North America. The investigation into this scandal has been ongoing since September 2021.

Ian Smith stated that the investigation included two groups. One consists of players who bet on themselves when the opportunity arises, and one group of players who are bribed by outside “betting syndicates” to organize matches.

“This is part of a much larger investigation, which is going to take us a bit longer,” Smith said in an interview with CS:GO content creator “slash32.”

Smith said his commission found that there was a group of players fixing match-fixing in North America’s MDL. Although the numbers are relatively small, Smith knows this is a significant disadvantage and has been going on for a long time. This investigation by ESIC involved law enforcement, to some extent.

“We worked with law enforcement, worked with the FBI which recently had a sports betting investigation unit. They are good, but they are inexperienced because sports betting hasn’t really been a problem in America until recently. So everyone is starting to get used to this situation.”

Smith said the findings from the first subsection of the investigation would be published in the next 10 days to 2 weeks. He added that ESIC has “very good corroborating evidence”. Players involved will be punished with a ban “for a very, very long time”.

“The first part we’re going to deal with pretty quickly, because we’re basically dealing with stupid people,” said Smith.

Just to remind you, in January 35 players were banned for periods ranging from 12 months to five years for betting-related offences in a CS:GO competition in Australia. One of them is Indonesian player, Wilson “⁠willyKS⁠” Sugianto.

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