It seems that when the public discovered that two prominent Youtubers (ProSyndicate and TmarTn) were owners of a CSGO Gambling site that they have heavily promoted without disclosure of their connection to the site a spotlight was shone upon a very secretive dark corner. A lot more has come out involving other sites and other prominent content-creators on both Youtube and Twitch. Now a set of Skype logs has been leaked that seem to implicate a Twitch streamer who became well known after he was swatted while on-air.
James "PhantomL0rd" Varga suffered the swatting back in 2013 as one of the earliest victims of the "prank". Now a hacker aiming to steal from a French target, Duhau Joris, a French web developer who owns the domain of gambling site CSGOShuffle, has leaked out to Richard Lewis a games and esports journalist. Watch his video here:
The Skype logs in question seem to prove that PhantomL0rd has at least a vested interest in the site, if not having some part in owning the business. Previously the streamer had claimed that the site only sponsored him when questions were raised in the wake of the CSGOLotto scandal earlier.
There are also implications that streamed pots might have been rigged in order to make the site more enticing to viewers by showing what could be won if they are only willing to come along and bet away their in-game items and skins in hopes of winning more.
Others implicated in this include cAre, one of the most well-known and prolific skin gamblers in the CS:GO trading scene right now, in that he might too have taken part in pots he knew were rigged (logs to do with his involvement are being translated still from the native French of cAre and Joris); as well as suggestions that PhantomL0rd is aware that another CSGOWild is affliated with an eSports organisation, FaZe. He also seemed to know of Syndicate's involvement with CSGOLotto as far back as November of last year.
"Also [CSGOLotto] the syndicate site and [CSGOWild] by the cod faze guys," Varga says. "I'm talking to both looking into what they're doing and if its [sic] a threat or not."
In the wake of exposure of shady and underhanded dealings to do with many CSGO gambling sites and content creators, Valve has recently put a stop to third-party gambling sites as they were ruled to violate Terms of Service that had been in place since 2010.
As always, when watching a content creator always be wary. Even with rules and laws in place, sometimes things aren't always as they seem.