Popular CS:GO gambling streamer James “PhantomL0rd” Varga in potential CSGO betting exposé.
Following the allegations that surfaced last week against prominent CounterStrike: Global Offensive streamers, a story has emerged over the weekend concerning James “PhantomL0rd” Varga, another member of the CS streaming/gambling community. According to logs obtained by and translated for leading eSports journalist Richard Lewis, Varga is directly connected to the popular gambling website CSGOShuffle.
The logs show conversations between James “PhantomL0rd” Varga and Joris Duhau, the site owner and back-end developer, and suggest Varga was paying Duhau to run the site and provide him with information concerning the hidden odds and best times to bet whilst streaming. Other information in the logs points at prominent French CS:GO bettor cAre receiving skins from Duhau, and that Varga was also aware of owners of competitor sites and their methods, including CSGOLotto.
CSGOLotto is the site owned by Trevor Martin and Tom "Syndicate" Cassel that hit headlines last week after videos made by H3H3 and HonourTheCall exposing their conflict of interest as both promoters and silent owners of the site went viral. Since then a poorly-received apology video from TMartn has arguably made that situation worse, and there are several lawsuits pending against both the owners of CSGOLotto and Valve themselves, owners and developers of both Steam and CS:GO.
For their part, Valve have already clarified that they do not support or have any stake in any of the skin betting sites, and will actively look to prevent sites using the Steam API for user verification.
On July 16th, Richard Lewis posted a video on his YouTube channel, titled “Phantoml0rd and CSGOShuffle”, where he explains that he was approached by an individual that had access to logs that had potentially incriminating evidence on CSGOShuffle and its owners. We had the privilege of examining these logs and there is evidence to suggest malpractice from the parties involved.
In the context of the stories that broke last week and before, exposing streamers as undisclosed partners/owners of sites they were promoting publicly, this is another blow for the online gambling community. It seems that we haven’t heard the last such story, and that the bubble is about to burst for those who had been on the dodgy gravy train.
Front page image courtesy of Twitch Reupload v2
