The Counter-Strike Gambling Scandal Explained

The “golden days” of Counter-Strike gambling had its fair share of issues, with the biggest one involving Trevor “TmarTn” Martin and Tom “ProSyndicate” Cassell, two prominent content creators who have 9 and 5 million subscribers on YouTube, respectively. In this article, we’ll go over the scandal involving their website, CSGOLotto, and exactly what happened.

Before getting into the main story, we figure you’d like a little bit of background about Counter-Strike gambling, as context is relatively important to understand the full scale of the story.

In 2013, the developers of Counter-Strike, Valve Corporation, introduced in-game weapon skins which are cosmetic items that alter the appearance of weapons. These skins can be tradable and marketable, meaning they can be transferred to other players and have real-world value.

By 2015, many third parties began operating gambling websites, with Counter-Strike skins acting as “gambling chips.” These websites operated using Steam Web API keys to link a player’s steam account to their website, making the deposit and withdrawal processes easier.

In this era of Counter-Strike gambling, the most popular games involved Player versus Player modes instead of betting against the house. As a result, all the craze was in game modes such as Jackpot or Coin Flip, where players would pool in skins and the winner would take all.

Now that we’ve gotten a grasp of what Counter-Strike gambling is all about, let’s start talking about the main course, which is infamously known as the “CSGOLotto incident.”

The Website in Question – CSGOLotto

CSGOLotto was one of the biggest players in the Counter-Strike gambling industry at the time. Instead of providing players with classic gambling games such as Roulette, Crash, and other game modes that went against the house, CSGOLotto was more focused on dueling modes where players would play for each other’s skins.

The most popular game mode at CSGOLotto was their Jackpot section, where players would deposit skins into a pot. The more money a player puts in, the higher their chances of winning. Once the pot has been finalized, a winner will be drawn who will sweep all the skins after the website takes a small percentage cut.

However, there was already one big issue with the website, which is the lack of age verification. This made CSGOLotto easily accessible to minors, which breaches the ethics of underage gambling.

The Scandal

At first, the website was operating fine, and big YouTubers and players spent hours on the “No Limit” pot where they would play for tens of thousands of dollars. Even non-gamblers would visit the website to see insane pots go down.

There were many content creators streaming themselves playing on CSGOLotto, with two very popular ones being TmarTn and ProSyndicate, YouTubers who have millions of subscribers on their respective channels.

However, the CSGO gambling scandal began when there were rumors, backed with evidence, that these two names had affiliations to the CSGOLotto website that they were actively playing on. It turns out that both of them had stakes on the website, and were essentially co-owners!

It is normal for content creators to expand their ventures and invest in websites, as they can use their platform and audience to attract new users. However, they were essentially claiming to be ordinary users of the website by playing on it, never disclosing they owned the website until it was too late.

What Did TmarTn and ProSyndicate do Wrong?

Playing on your own casino website naturally poses a lot of problems, so let’s go over the key highlights that made this such a big issue.

A Lack of Transparency

Obviously, there was a massive lack of transparency. Both YouTubers were having a good time gambling on the CSGOLotto site while streaming to thousands of viewers. However, they failed to disclose that they had financial ties to the website, and they even had high positions on it by being co-owners.

After a massive investigation was conducted, it was revealed that the two YouTubers were silly enough to register the CSGOLotto business under their real names, so the proof of them owning the website was already written on pen and paper – nowhere to run.

Promoting Gambling to Minors

The transparency was already a bad look, but we have to take a step back to assess the fanbase of TmarTn and ProSyndicate. A significant percentage of their audience were minors that were exposed to the world of gambling.

Just by streaming themselves gambling, they are essentially promoting such activities to a young and impressionable audience who are not educated enough to understand the impacts of gambling.

Going back to the point earlier, the CSGOLotto website had a very weak age verification system, so you can already imagine how many minors were creating accounts and depositing their skins, not knowing any better.

Potentially Rigging Games

We never know what happens behind the scenes. By having ownership of the website, it is safe to say that TmarTn and ProSyndicate have access to the website’s backend system and its employees.

There is a high possibility that they were rigging games in their favor. Rigging games for themselves in Roulette or Crash wouldn’t be as bad as this, since the winnings and losses will go through the site’s finances, so they would essentially be playing with their own money. However, in a game mode like Jackpot, they are up against real players who deposit their own funds, and potentially stealing from them by rigging games is a massive issue.

TmarTn and ProSyndicate could have altered the outcomes of their Jackpot games, allowing them to show big wins to their audience and entice them to try and replicate the same by gambling.

It is completely normal for YouTubers and content creators to play on gambling sites. Some do it as their personal hobby, while others are paid to play on the site and promote it to their audience.

Some websites will offer content creators free website balance or skins to play with on their website, and they could keep the skins and their winnings after playing on it in front of their audience. Other deals could involve the website directly paying the content creator to stream themselves playing for a fixed amount of time, and the skins or funds will be returned to the website after the session has ended.

Such activities are totally fine as long as the content creators are transparent with their audience, revealing that it is sponsored gameplay and they are being paid to promote the website. Most YouTubers nowadays will always reveal that disclosure early on.

However, a large problem arises when you are the owners of a website, and you are playing on your own platform. There were instances of the two YouTubers claiming to play on CSGOLotto as a sponsored stream, but obviously, that was a big lie once the truth was revealed.

Such an incident sent huge waves to the CSGO community, and most of the reactions were against TmarTn and ProSyndicate.

There were a lot of concerns being raised surrounding Counter-Strike gambling, as any other content creator could be hiding their ownership on other websites, too. Additionally, the promotion of gambling to minors also became a huge talking point.

What Happened to TmarTn and ProSyndicate

It’s not surprising that the two YouTubers had to lawyer up, as they broke several laws and breached codes of ethics. The pair made public apologies, which received a lot of mixed reactions from the public. However, the two culprits pretty much got away without jail time.

Their lawyers could get the lawsuits against them dismissed because they used a loophone. CSGOLotto wasn’t considered a gambling site because any player could join their “contests” for free without any purchase.

Both of them still have their YouTube channels up and running, and still have millions of subscribers. However, they aren’t too welcomed in the Counter-Strike community, which is why we barely see any content about the game on their channels.

What Happened to His CSGO Gambling Site?

CSGOLotto unavoidably faced legal challenges, forcing the website to shut down not long after the incident. Even after eight years, the website is still nowhere to be found. However, the website’s Twitter account still exists, though the last post was all the way in July 2016.

Valve Steps In

Valve was also forced to step in, as the scandal was related to their game and was only possible because the website had access to Steam’s API web system. The company faced lawsuits that they were facilitating illegal gambling, but Valve wasn’t in the wrong, as their platform was being abused.

Still, Valve took action and tried their best to abolish Counter-Strike gambling sites directly and indirectly. They announced a new CSGO trading rule where skins would be “trade-locked” for seven days after receiving it in a trade. Since players need to deposit skins immediately to play PvP game modes, the trade lock essentially kills Coin Flip and Jackpot.

What Happened to CSGO Gambling After?

Many other gambling sites were forced to shut down after Valve adjusted their regulations due to the CSGOLotto incident. Now, most CSGO gambling websites use cash betting using payment methods such as cryptocurrency.

Yes, there are many small-scale CSGO gambling scams that were exposed in the industry. We’ll highlight two larger ones, which are the iBUYPOWER match-fixing scandal, and popular streamer m0E’s problematic collaboration with CSGODiamonds.

iBUYPOWER Match-fixing

This scandal happened before CSGOLotto, taking place in 2014. The iBUYPOWER organization had a professional Counter-Strike division that was the best team in North America and a serious global competitor.

Gambling Counter-Strike skins on professional matches was and still is a very popular activity, and most bets at the time were placed on CSGOLounge, the most prominent CSGO bookmaker in the scene.

iBUYPWOER had a Best of 1 series against NetCodeGuides.com, a team that was severely weaker than them. As a result, the betting odds on NetCodeGuides.com provided players with incredibly high returns.

The players and managers of the iBUYPOWER roster decided to bet thousands of dollars against themselves and intentionally threw the match, losing 4-16. During the match, it was clear that the iBUYPOWER squad wasn’t taking the match seriously, and their players were going for questionable plays and missing easy shots.

Later on, it was exposed that they intentionally lost the match. The entire iBUYPOWER roster except Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham planned out the match-fixing attempt, and even the founder of NetCodeGuides.com was in on it too.

Valve placed indefinite bans on all the players and staff involved, with generational talent Braxton “swag” Pierce also taking the hit. In 2023, it was revealed by Josh “steel” Nissan, one of the iBUYPOWER players, that the ban actually lasted ten years and the squad would be unbanned in 2024.

This scandal alarmed many parties in the professional Counter-Strike scene, as match-fixing could happen anywhere and at any time. There are cases of match-fixing still being exposed today, but the iBUYPOWER scandal was the biggest one since they were considered a Tier 1 team.

m0E and CSGODiamonds

Former professional player, now content creator Mohaman “m0E” Assad was also involved in a gambling scandal with popular gambling website CSGODiamonds. However, it wasn’t as big of a deal as CSGOLotto.

The retired player is known to stream a lot of Counter-Strike gambling content. The CSGODiamonds owners reached out to m0E to promote the website by conducting a sponsored live stream of him playing on the website. This is a normal occurrence, as almost every gambling website would hire influencers to give their website more exposure.

However, conflicts between the partnership arose when m0E claimed the CSGODiamonds owners were rigging games in his favor without him asking them to. The owners did this because they wanted m0E’s viewers to witness the highs of gambling, watching him win and motivating them to try gambling themselves.

At the same time, m0E continued to claim that CSGODiamonds had not paid him money he felt he was owed. With these two reasons in mind, m0E decided to threaten the CSGODiamonds owners that he would expose the website for rigging his games and not paying him his share.

The CSGODiamonds owners provided proof to the community that m0E was really asking them to rig his games, so they weren’t doing it when he didn’t want them to. Additionally, CSGODiamonds revealed that m0E was playing with sponsored money, which means he is playing with “house money” and shouldn’t be allowed to withdraw the funds.