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An employee of a fantasy sports site has been terminated for his alleged role in a cheating scandal involving a prestigious NFL playoffs tournament with a six-figure first prize.
The National Fantasy Football Championship acknowledged Wednesday in a post on its website that an employee used internal controls to make advantageous changes to a contestant's roster after games had kicked off, including swapping in a player who had already scored a touchdown, reports David Purdum of ESPN.
"Recently, with help from reporting by a public source, we successfully revealed a post-deadline move in one of our NFFC Post-Season Hold 'Em contests that was detected and quickly confirmed, resulting in SportsHub being able to take immediate action to resolve the issue without any impact to the results of the contest," wrote NFFC founder Greg Ambrosius, a fantasy sports industry veteran.
"As a result of its internal investigation, an employee was terminated and a contest participant has been banned from further play on our platforms."
SportsHub is the parent company for the National Fantasy Football Championship, which operates the tournament. None of the parties involved, including the contestants and terminated employee, have been named.
Jeff Edelstein of RotoGrinders explained how the scheme was uncovered:
To nutshell: The Hold’em contest is somewhat complicated to explain, but the gist of it is contestants pick one player from each of the 12 playoff teams to start, earning multiplier points for each round of the playoffs you have the player, and as players get knocked out, you get to pick up new players.
As a result of the format, contestants – as the weeks progress – can get a reasonably solid idea of what they may have to do with their lineup choices to be able to move up the standings.
And that’s how the scandal was uncovered.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
