The shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been one of the major eSports titles for years. As such, it is also represented in sports betting and the like. And it is precisely in these bets that scandals keep occurring, in which even the American domestic intelligence agency is now investigating.
In an interview with Integrity Commissioner Ian Smith of the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC), he spoke about betting in CS:GO. The organization is dedicated to combating fraud in eSports. This includes rigged matches and betting fraud.
Apparently, there are currently some cases in the popular shooter from Valve that will lead to several bans. However, it is not only individual players involved but also larger organizations behind the fraud, so that even intelligence agencies are now involved:
“I can only speak generally […] We are conducting a focused investigation in which we have really good evidence from Discord, various chat logs, screenshots, recordings of players that we will ban for a long time. […]
But this is part of a much larger investigation that unfortunately will take longer. There has been organized, manipulated matches over a long time under a relatively small but significant group in the North American MDL. […]
To some extent, we are working with law enforcement, with the FBI, who just had an investigation into sports betting.”
Ian Smith
The interview was conducted by Counter-Strike expert “slash32” and published on his YouTube channel. We have embedded the video here for you, the section about the FBI starts at minute 20:23:
Sports betting is apparently a bigger problem
Why is the FBI investigating? The fact that the FBI is now investigating is likely due to the scale of the cases. According to Smith, not only the athletes themselves are involved in the betting fraud, but even outsiders. “There are more players who are bribed by outside syndicates to rig matches than those who opportunistically do it on their own. This has been going on for a while and is significantly more organized.”
According to Smith, sports betting has only been legal in some states in the U.S. since last year. For that reason, the FBI probably now has an interest in clarification.
However, the relatively new laws also lead to problems. It is not always clear what is allowed and what is not. Smith explains: “They [the FBI] are good, but they are inexperienced because sports betting did not play a role in America until recently.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the central security agency of the USA. It serves both as an intelligence service domestically as well as a criminal police force handling federal law offenses in the United States.
Why specifically CS:GO? Betting fraud and other problems have been a topic in CS:GO for some time. Just in August 2019, 6 Australian players were arrested for manipulating bets.
In this case, ESIC also worked with the Australian authorities and there, as Smith says, it is a crime that is punished with imprisonment. Five of the players faced up to 10 years in prison shortly after the arrest.
Trading skins in CS:GO is also popular – and is exploited. Some of the cosmetics for the weapons in the game are coveted collector’s items that can be worth several hundred or even several thousand euros.
Consequently, there is also temptation for criminals to ease others of this money. Just in February 2021, there was a case where a fraudster stole a skin for €1,160. This even led to a police search.
