NFFC Cheating Scandal: Caught Cheating & Fired, NFFC (1 Viewer)

[Hot Sauce Guy]

Total death sentence for that site IMO. I would never play with them after this.

Counterpoint: something like this can happen to any contest.

That they caught it and are investigating means it will be under even greater scrutiby moving forward.

I’ll likely continue to play in NFFC contests. But I do think this will be revealed to be worse than we currently know.

 

[JohnnyU]

They need an external audit.

This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Or most likely they want this to go away as quickly as possible. It’s bad for business. I wonder how many people lost money at the hands of these people?

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

They need an external audit.

This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Or most likely they want this to go away as quickly as possible. It’s bad for business. I wonder how many people lost money at the hands of these people?

Thus the external audit.

I’m sure the 1st reaction was to tell everyone everything is fine, we caught it, all good.

But that trust will have to be restored. Like @Dez, I’ll go back and play again next year, confident that Ambrosious is a stand-up dude & they’ll get this buttoned up.

Not everyone is as trusting. Especially gamblers. As I said previously, transparency is key. It’s imperative they conduct full audits using an external resource and spare no expense doing so, or IMO it will be the end of the NFFC as an institution.

There’s an opportunity here to not only handle this the right way, but to handle it in such a way as to market how they handled it.

Unfortunately there’s also an opportunity to squander that opportunity.

 

[scoobus]

Anytime $$$ is involved, people gotta cheat to win smfh

I know. I probably need to rethink playing online poker. I don’t play very often and I play low stakes but still.

If you're playing online poker nowadays, you're almost certainly playing against bots and/or RTA cheaters. Of course if it's just low stakes just for fun type money not a big deal, but I can't imagine trying to make a career out of it like so many did back during the boom.

 

[JohnnyU]

They need an external audit.

This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Or most likely they want this to go away as quickly as possible. It’s bad for business. I wonder how many people lost money at the hands of these people?

Thus the external audit.

I’m sure the 1st reaction was to tell everyone everything is fine, we caught it, all good.

But that trust will have to be restored. Like @Dez, I’ll go back and play again next year, confident that Anbrosious is a stand-up dude & they’ll get this buttoned up.

Not everyone is as trusting. Especially gamblers. As I said previously, transparency is key. It’s imperative they conduct full audits using an external resource and spare no expense doing so, or IMO it will be the end of the NFFC as an institution.

There’s an opportunity here to not only handle this the right way, but to handle it in such a way as to market how they handled it.

Unfortunately there’s also an opportunity to squander that opportunity.

I agree that transparency is a must, but they probably want to minimize the impact if they can get this over with asap. They may feel it’s in their best interest to tie it up in a nice little knot, thus the reason to say what they’ve already said. We caught those responsible and that it is confined to just this incident. My guess is that it doesn’t go any further unless there is a law suit that keeps it on the front burner. It boils down to how far does someone want to take it.

 

[scoobus]

Total death sentence for that site IMO. I would never play with them after this.

Counterpoint: something like this can happen to any contest.

That they caught it and are investigating means it will be under even greater scrutiby moving forward.

I’ll likely continue to play in NFFC contests. But I do think this will be revealed to be worse than we currently know.

Counter-counterpoint: They didn't catch it though, the public did.

And as far as I know they didn't take legal action against they guy, merely fired him, which is a massive red flag. It's still early in the investigation or w/e you wanna call it though, so things could change there I suppose.

Still, I don't see how you come back from this. And I find it wildly unlikely that this is the first ever unethical thing to have happened. In regards to their investigation, they're almost incentivized to try and prove nothing happened outside of this before, which again is a huge conflict of interest. The whole thing just stinks.

 

[rockaction]

Never play these tournaments. I just shake my head. It’s inevitable.

 

[rockaction]

I just . . . You can’t have these guys and their cronies run this stuff. There always seems like there’s malfeasance of some sort. I never gamble on this stuff. It’s not necessarily a lack of funds (well, that’s part of it) but it corrupts the game. Cash games are all about what others will do for cash. I’d rather not have that in my football.

Just my own two cents.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

Still, I don't see how you come back from this

I thought I spelled that out pretty clearly - they have a firm like Deloitte come in & do a full audit of the last 10 years of contests.

They have to spend a small fortune proving to the public that their contest is on the level.

And moving forward, they have the 3rd party oversight they’ve promised to ensure it can’t happen again.

I see a pretty clear path for them to continue being a premium fantasy contest site. But it’s going to be neither cheap nor easy.

 

[Neil Beaufort Zod]

That was a sobering thread to read. I get that there's a lot of money at stake, and the game's integrity was damaged. But people were talking like they found out a good friend was a serial killer. He's ruined his life, he's fighting demons, how can we move forward from this. Are they talking about a fantasy game, or 9/11?

Any time big money is changing hands, you're going to have people looking for an edge, or an opportunity to cheat. Is it really that shocking?

Again, I get that it's a big deal, and people have poured their lives and careers into the game. Now it's threatened because somebody went rogue. But I'm pretty sure nobody died. The lesson for me was that there are people waaay more invested in the game than I am, mentally, emotionally, financially, etc. I need to keep that in mind in the heat of the next playoff race.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

That was a sobering thread to read. I get that there's a lot of money at stake, and the game's integrity was damaged. But people were talking like they found out a good friend was a serial killer. He's ruined his life, he's fighting demons, how can we move forward from this. Are they talking about a fantasy game, or 9/11?

Any time big money is changing hands, you're going to have people looking for an edge, or an opportunity to cheat. Is it really that shocking?

Again, I get that it's a big deal, and people have poured their lives and careers into the game. Now it's threatened because somebody went rogue. But I'm pretty sure nobody died. The lesson for me was that there are people waaay more invested in the game than I am, mentally, emotionally, financially, etc. I need to keep that in mind in the heat of the next playoff race.

Well yeah, when playing for $200K, people take that ish seriously.

I forget what the top Hold ‘Em payout is for the $300 league in question, but it’s substantial.

The last few years for my bday I’ve treated myself to a 3-pack of NFFC leagues.

There are folks with 100+ teams across a dozen contests. To say there’s a chasm between my reaction to this & those folks would likely be a dramatic understatement. Or maybe not.

That said, so long as it’s policed sufficiently, I think it’ll all work out. But it’ll probably get a little ugly as more info comes out, and as more of their customers learn about this.

I’d be willing to bet that only about 20-30% of the NFFC customer base knows this even happened. Like I said, I had to randomly find out on Twitter when Razzball tweeted about it.

The one thing NFFC has going for it is their reputation is very good. Ambrosious isn’t new at this, and as @Joe Bryant pointed out, he’s known for being a top industry person. I’m sure FBG is very selective about who hosts their contests, and they trust NFFC, along with 1000s of FF players for a reason.

I’m hopeful this all gets worked out with a high degree of professionalism to everyone’s satisfaction.

 

[Neil Beaufort Zod]

That was a sobering thread to read. I get that there's a lot of money at stake, and the game's integrity was damaged. But people were talking like they found out a good friend was a serial killer. He's ruined his life, he's fighting demons, how can we move forward from this. Are they talking about a fantasy game, or 9/11?

Any time big money is changing hands, you're going to have people looking for an edge, or an opportunity to cheat. Is it really that shocking?

Again, I get that it's a big deal, and people have poured their lives and careers into the game. Now it's threatened because somebody went rogue. But I'm pretty sure nobody died. The lesson for me was that there are people waaay more invested in the game than I am, mentally, emotionally, financially, etc. I need to keep that in mind in the heat of the next playoff race.

Well yeah, when playing for $200K, people take that ish seriously.

I forget what the top Hold ‘Em payout is for the $300 league in question, but it’s substantial.

The last few years for my bday I’ve treated myself to a 3-pack of NFFC leagues.

There are folks with 100+ teams across a dozen contests. To say there’s a chasm between my reaction to this & those folks would likely be a dramatic understatement. Or maybe not.

That said, so long as it’s policed sufficiently, I think it’ll all work out. But it’ll probably get a little ugly as more info comes out, and as more of their customers learn about this.

I’d be willing to bet that only about 20-30% of the NFFC customer base knows this even happened. Like I said, I had to randomly find out on Twitter when Razzball tweeted about it.

The one thing NFFC has going for it is their reputation is very good. Ambrosious isn’t new at this, and as @Joe Bryant pointed out, he’s known for being a top industry person. I’m sure FBG is very selective about who hosts their contests, and they trust NFFC, along with 1000s of FF players for a reason.

I’m hopeful this all gets worked out with a high degree of professionalism to everyone’s satisfaction.

Good points. The real victims are the people who have spent decades building a reputation, just to see one person ruin it. I hope they bounce back.

I probably shouldn't have said anything, since I never play high stakes. Even if it's discretionary money and it's budgeted to be lost...I found I don't enjoy it. The money takes something away for me. If I made 750K a year (I don't), I think a $300 league would still bother me. I'd always remember when that was a lot of money to me. Just don't have the gambling gene, I guess.

I still think some of the responses were over the top, but I get why it's a black mark on a game with a sterling reputation.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

Good points. The real victims are the people who have spent decades building a reputation, just to see one person ruin it. I hope they bounce back.

That’s the truth right there.

Imagine spending years building a rep and a trusted employee risks trashing it for god only knows what motivation.

I can’t imagine why someone would risk their entire career like that - surely no matter what the payoff, their annual salary and professional reputation was worth substantially more.

I probably shouldn't have said anything, since I never play high stakes. Even if it's discretionary money and it's budgeted to be lost...I found I don't enjoy it. The money takes something away for me. If I made 750K a year (I don't), I think a $300 league would still bother me. I'd always remember when that was a lot of money to me. Just don't have the gambling gene, I guess.

I get it - and I’m far from a wealthy man. $1000 is still a lot of money to me. I’m self-employed!

But that said, I can’t take it with me, and I write it off mentally as a frivolous expense. I don’t play poker in card rooms any more, & my dynasty leagues are all pretty low stakes.

And FF is something I feel like I’m pretty good at, so I don’t mind taking a moonshot at $200K. Someone’s gotta win it. Ya can’t win if ya don’t play. I made the finals this year & had a top ~70 finish out of ~5K teams. That wasn’t good for a payout, but it gave me some confidence that I’m not a total guppy swimming with sharks.

We all have our hobbies. Some are way more expensive than $1k a year. I have a friend with a boat and a couple jet skis who spends waaaaaaaay more than I do on FF. lol

I still think some of the responses were over the top, but I get why it's a black mark on a game with a sterling reputation.

Oh I agree - and I expect when more people find out, some are gonna lose their minds over it.

Razzball suggested refunding anyone who played in a league with this dude their money.

It’s not a terrible idea.

 

[GreenNGold]

The person who was caught cheating won $20k from the same contest back in 2019.

 

[Craig_MiamiFL]

It is the death of NFFC

And it's since come to light this is NOT the only time a post-lock move has been made in a contest involving the guy.

"We can easily track the use of the software for this move and we GUARANTEE no other moves were made on any other team in this contest. We have tracked all of our contests and know for a fact that this was a one-off incident and no other contests from previous years have ever been affected."

REALLY bad move saying anything along the lines of an "isolated incident" or "guarantee" of anything.......when you yourself didn't catch the first incident. People don't just suddenly start cheating and cheat once. The cheating here was finally caught by a 3rd party.

This is the tip of the iceberg.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

The person who was caught cheating won $20k from the same contest back in 2019.

Ooooooooooof

That’s….not good.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

It is the death of NFFC

And it's since come to light this is NOT the only time a post-lock move has been made in a contest involving the guy.

"We can easily track the use of the software for this move and we GUARANTEE no other moves were made on any other team in this contest. We have tracked all of our contests and know for a fact that this was a one-off incident and no other contests from previous years have ever been affected."

REALLY bad move saying anything along the lines of an "isolated incident" or "guarantee" of anything.......when you yourself didn't catch the first incident. People don't just suddenly start cheating and cheat once. The cheating here was finally caught by a 3rd party.

This is the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, I posted that update. It has yet to be verified but it sounds credible.

 

[Craig_MiamiFL]

PFT now covering the NFFC cheating scandal(s)

https://twitter.com/ProFootballTalk/status/1750743497538208027?t=iRwaQqmtMkPWZzmc8CBlKQ&s=19

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

PFT now covering the NFFC cheating scandal(s)

https://twitter.com/ProFootballTalk/status/1750743497538208027?t=iRwaQqmtMkPWZzmc8CBlKQ&s=19

Hoo boy. Any possible hopes of keeping this story low key just blew up entirely.

I feel for the honorable staff at NFFC. One bad apple and all that.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

“Nothing is more important than the integrity of a pay-to-play contest,” NFFC founder Greg Ambrosius told Purdum on Thursday. “We have built up 20-plus years of integrity through transparency and everything we’ve done. And by one action, it’s put all of it in question. It’s put me and everybody associated with our company in question.”

The problem was spotted by a group of contestants who were examining the various lineups. One member of that group was Pete Overzet.

“It wouldn’t have stood out unless you were intimately familiar with how that contest works,” Overzet told Purdum. “I think this is incredibly damaging [to the fantasy industry]. We’re in an era where people want to jump to conspiracy theories. Now, not only do you know that It can occur, but it did occur, I think that’s going to spread the seeds of distrust.”

The termination of the employee and disqualification of the contestant shouldn’t be the end of this, but the beginning. Both individuals involved in the alleged scam potentially broke one or more state or federal laws. For public contests like this, the punishments shouldn’t be solely private. To deter others from trying to pull a fast one in the future in similar competitions, there should be the same kind of prosecution that would apply in other businesses where fraud and related misconduct often occur, to the detriment of others.

That might seem harsh on the surface. Without real consequences for rigging a high-stakes competitive endeavor like this, efforts to rig such games will continue. And people will indeed lose trust in the entire industry.

Well said. There should be criminal consequences for those involved.

 

[rockaction]

NFFC PFFC

ANYFC

Money with strangers leads to bad results. Always has. Always will. Competition is bad enough. Money? Better be really transparent and have a ton of trust. Once that’s gone, it’s all gone.

 

[Max Power]

Anytime $$$ is involved, people gotta cheat to win smfh

I know. I probably need to rethink playing online poker. I don’t play very often and I play low stakes but still.

I just assume there's cheating in every big contest so I don't enter such things. The Fanduel employee using data for Draft Kings (or was it the other way around?) was just one example. I limit my play only to FFPC, and only to 12 team or less leagues. I would never be able to detect shenanigans in a 1000+ person contest. I MAY be able to notice something in a 12 person league, with head-to-head lineups, etc. Of course there are possibilities to cheat there as well, just presumably less likely.

Most importantly, there's also the possibility online sites like this could just shut down tomorrow and walk away with everyone's cash. Thus I'll never play the real high stakes stuff that would really hurt if I'm cheated.

Sadly I'm right there with you. I've never had faith those things were 100% on the up and up.

 

[SanDawg]

Done with that site...agreed with many here, happened more than once and once is enough for me.

 

[jm192]

It is the death of NFFC

And it's since come to light this is NOT the only time a post-lock move has been made in a contest involving the guy.

"We can easily track the use of the software for this move and we GUARANTEE no other moves were made on any other team in this contest. We have tracked all of our contests and know for a fact that this was a one-off incident and no other contests from previous years have ever been affected."

REALLY bad move saying anything along the lines of an "isolated incident" or "guarantee" of anything.......when you yourself didn't catch the first incident. People don't just suddenly start cheating and cheat once. The cheating here was finally caught by a 3rd party.

This is the tip of the iceberg.

100%.

You can't get caught with your pants down and tell everyone "This was a 1 time thing, trust me. No reason to check my text messages to my hot co-worker."

These guys didn't wake up bold enough to change lineups. There was certainly smaller levels of cheating before. As others have pointed out: Perhaps he had access to player percentages or even lineups. If the employee was helping this friend--are there other friends he was helping in a less blatant fashion?

I've never participated in any of their contests. But if I had, I would doubt the integrity of every contest I've ever been in. The whole "No bro, trust us" doesn't fix it for me.

I would question if there aren't civil cases that come out of this. Could NFFC wind up on the hook for every entry fee they ever received? As you said, tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more to come from this. I'll be shocked if this doesn't lead to shutting the doors.

 

[JohnnyU]

I just watched the entire video for the first time. IMO the software shouldn’t allow employees to change a lineup after lock for any reason. If there is a software malfunction (knowing this incident wasn’t the case) and some change is required, the software should capture this change and immediately post it on the main website and give the reason. Full transparency. But for any other reason employees should not be allowed to make changes post-lock. By allowing this, the contest owners are to blame for the situation they are in and most likely will go out of business. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. If the contest owners have no control over the software, they should have negotiated software changes before getting into bed with whoever owns the site and / or the software. If the contest owners also own the software, there should have been meetings to close loopholes in the software and hired good programmers to do it.

 

[GroveDiesel]

A full forensic accounting by an outside firm seems like a must at this point. If trust is gone, that will be the end of them unless they can earn it back with transparency and accountability.

 

[Craig_MiamiFL]

PFT now covering the NFFC cheating scandal(s)

https://twitter.com/ProFootballTalk/status/1750743497538208027?t=iRwaQqmtMkPWZzmc8CBlKQ&s=19

Hoo boy. Any possible hopes of keeping this story low key just blew up entirely.

I feel for the honorable staff at NFFC. One bad apple and all that.

Unless I missed it, I'm pretty sure there's not yet been an email blast. Which really should have been step one as I believe was mentioned previously above.

Now many of their paying customers will find out via PFT/NYPost ...and not NFFC themselves.

I think Greg rushed to put something out....and it didn't come off well. Like at all. I think most can read his posts and figure them out. This isn't a friend matter. It's business and it's criminal. You can forgive your criminal friend (or try to protect him even) if you like and the weird demon stuff. None of that stuff matters. The legal stuff to come will

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

PFT now covering the NFFC cheating scandal(s)

https://twitter.com/ProFootballTalk/status/1750743497538208027?t=iRwaQqmtMkPWZzmc8CBlKQ&s=19

Hoo boy. Any possible hopes of keeping this story low key just blew up entirely.

I feel for the honorable staff at NFFC. One bad apple and all that.

Unless I missed it, I'm pretty sure there's not yet been an email blast. Which really should have been step one as I believe was mentioned previously above.

Now many of their paying customers will find out via PFT/NYPost ...and not NFFC themselves.

I think Greg rushed to put something out....and it didn't come off well. Like at all. I think most can read his posts and figure them out. This isn't a friend matter. It's business and it's criminal. You can forgive your criminal friend (or try to protect him even) if you like and the weird demon stuff. None of that stuff matters. The legal stuff to come will

Yep - I essentially described it as what I would have expected as the bare minimum in customer service.

Posting to their message board is all well and good, but you have to be more proactive than that with something like this.

As a PM for ~20 years, my experience was that if a project deployment had issues, you have to get out ahead of it with communication, rather than have users slowly discover that something was broken. Crisis management hinges on effective communication.

1000s of users learning about this from the NY Post or a friend who read the Post & texted them isn’t effective crisis management.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

Case in point: now there’s rampant speculation on Twitter (and I’m sure other places) about the extent of the issue:

Speculation that the player doesn’t actually exist, for example…

 

[Soulfly3]

Case in point: now there’s rampant speculation on Twitter (and I’m sure other places) about the extent of the issue:

Speculation that the player doesn’t actually exist, for example…

It's apparently been confirmed the person DOES exist.

But his account COULD have been used by other individuals, they say.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

Case in point: now there’s rampant speculation on Twitter (and I’m sure other places) about the extent of the issue:

Speculation that the player doesn’t actually exist, for example…

It's apparently been confirmed the person DOES exist.

But his account COULD have been used by other individuals, they say.

Yep.

And a lot of folks share @Craig_MiamiFL sentiment that looking out for a buddy and being concerned about their demons is all well and good, but this is actually a criminal matter.

Several specific laws were broken, and it could jeopardize NFFC’s ability to run contests.

NFFC needs to get out ahead of this because right now it’s snowballing and at risk of running them over.

 

[efactor]

Sad that this kind of stuff happens. I guess eventually someone thinks they can get away with cheating and while most people who play don’t have an actual gambling problem, some do and desperation or perceived desperation comes into play.

I was playing in the old WCOFF when the winner only got paid a portion of what he actually won because they were waiting for their fantasy baseball money to hit before they could pay out. Ponzi scheme basically. Took me about 5 years until I had enough trust to get back into high stakes with FFPC.

 

[Max Power]

I just watched the entire video for the first time. IMO the software shouldn’t allow employees to change a lineup after lock for any reason. If there is a software malfunction (knowing this incident wasn’t the case) and some change is required, the software should capture this change and immediately post it on the main website and give the reason. Full transparency. But for any other reason employees should not be allowed to make changes post-lock. By allowing this, the contest owners are to blame for the situation they are in and most likely will go out of business. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. If the contest owners have no control over the software, they should have negotiated software changes before getting into bed with whoever owns the site and / or the software. If the contest owners also own the software, there should have been meetings to close loopholes in the software and hired good programmers to do it.

I think I agree with this. There was a backdoor that they HAD to know about. They trusted an employee too much and didn't lock the door tight enough. Was there even a valid reason to have that backdoor option? Ultimately this falls on the person who failed the checks and balances process. No reason to think the consumer base will continue to give that person money going forward.

 

[massraider]

If you are relying on software of any kind, this risk comes with it.

Even if they made it impossible for anyone to change a roster after kickoff, how would anyone know? Everyone going to read the code?

 

[JohnnyU]

I just watched the entire video for the first time. IMO the software shouldn’t allow employees to change a lineup after lock for any reason. If there is a software malfunction (knowing this incident wasn’t the case) and some change is required, the software should capture this change and immediately post it on the main website and give the reason. Full transparency. But for any other reason employees should not be allowed to make changes post-lock. By allowing this, the contest owners are to blame for the situation they are in and most likely will go out of business. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. If the contest owners have no control over the software, they should have negotiated software changes before getting into bed with whoever owns the site and / or the software. If the contest owners also own the software, there should have been meetings to close loopholes in the software and hired good programmers to do it.

I think I agree with this. There was a backdoor that they HAD to know about. They trusted an employee too much and didn't lock the door tight enough. Was there even a valid reason to have that backdoor option? Ultimately this falls on the person who failed the checks and balances process. No reason to think the consumer base will continue to give that person money going forward.

Limit access post-lock and if a change is a must (software malfunction), capture the change and make it known to everyone. The software can be programmed to do this automatically without human intervention.

 

[Max Power]

Case in point: now there’s rampant speculation on Twitter (and I’m sure other places) about the extent of the issue:

Speculation that the player doesn’t actually exist, for example…

It's apparently been confirmed the person DOES exist.

But his account COULD have been used by other individuals, they say.

Several specific laws were broken, and it could jeopardize NFFC’s ability to run contests.

I'm not familiar with the on-line gaming/gambling regulations but which specific laws? I understand how unethical it was, I'm more curious where the accountability piece comes in if not from the customer.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

If you are relying on software of any kind, this risk comes with it.

Even if they made it impossible for anyone to change a roster after kickoff, how would anyone know? Everyone going to read the code?

Exactly.

It’s also possible that the dude who made the post-lock changes was at least involved with, but potentially instrumental in system design.

Personally I can’t believe they thought they could get away with a stat change without the FF nerds noticing.

FF nerds LIVE for data analysis. I just assume some squinty eyed dork in his grandmother’s basement is going to be combing over lineups/stats post-mortem-ing the s##t out of a contest like this.

Uh, no offense to anyone here who that describes.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

I'm not familiar with the on-line gaming/gambling regulations but which specific laws? I understand how unethical it was, I'm more curious where the accountability piece comes in if not from the customer.

I’m not an attorney, but I’ve seen several weigh in citing statutes on Twitter - interstate gambling laws, etc. I will defer to their expertise and accept that this should be a criminal matter.

 

[JohnnyU]

If you are relying on software of any kind, this risk comes with it.

Even if they made it impossible for anyone to change a roster after kickoff, how would anyone know? Everyone going to read the code?

I’m pretty sure the contest owners would want software that is well written and prevents this from happening. software that automatically reports on needed changes, giving full transparency. You have to rely on software in every day life. Not to mention it has been my career.

 

[Joe Bryant]

From Greg Ambrosius on their NFFC forums.

Bringing in 3rd party auditors.

NFFC Employee Fired After Illegal Move Was Detected - NFFC Message Boards

nffcforums.shgn.com

To further enhance its commitment to integrity and transparency, SportsHub is contracting with U.S. Integrity, Inc., (https://www.usintegrity.com/) - the gaming industry leader in integrity investigations and consulting – to provide third party verification of all lineups and transactions moving forward. SportsHub thanks its players and the public for the continuing success of SportsHub, the NFFC, and all of its fantasy gaming platforms.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

From Greg Ambrosius on their NFFC forums.

Bringing in 3rd party auditors.

NFFC Employee Fired After Illegal Move Was Detected - NFFC Message Boards

nffcforums.shgn.com

To further enhance its commitment to integrity and transparency, SportsHub is contracting with U.S. Integrity, Inc., (https://www.usintegrity.com/) - the gaming industry leader in integrity investigations and consulting – to provide third party verification of all lineups and transactions moving forward. SportsHub thanks its players and the public for the continuing success of SportsHub, the NFFC, and all of its fantasy gaming platforms.

That’s 100% the correct call.

ETA: except it has to be retroactive as well. This says “moving forward”.

Still no mass email to the user base. That’s a missed step IMO.

 

[Joe Bryant]

From Greg Ambrosius on their NFFC forums.

Bringing in 3rd party auditors.

NFFC Employee Fired After Illegal Move Was Detected - NFFC Message Boards

nffcforums.shgn.com

To further enhance its commitment to integrity and transparency, SportsHub is contracting with U.S. Integrity, Inc., (https://www.usintegrity.com/) - the gaming industry leader in integrity investigations and consulting – to provide third party verification of all lineups and transactions moving forward. SportsHub thanks its players and the public for the continuing success of SportsHub, the NFFC, and all of its fantasy gaming platforms.

That’s 100% the correct call.

ETA: except it has to be retroactive as well. This says “moving forward”.

It's retroactive.

NFFC Employee Fired After Illegal Move Was Detected - Page 3 - NFFC Message Boards

nffcforums.shgn.com

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

From Greg Ambrosius on their NFFC forums.

Bringing in 3rd party auditors.

NFFC Employee Fired After Illegal Move Was Detected - NFFC Message Boards

nffcforums.shgn.com

To further enhance its commitment to integrity and transparency, SportsHub is contracting with U.S. Integrity, Inc., (https://www.usintegrity.com/) - the gaming industry leader in integrity investigations and consulting – to provide third party verification of all lineups and transactions moving forward. SportsHub thanks its players and the public for the continuing success of SportsHub, the NFFC, and all of its fantasy gaming platforms.

That’s 100% the correct call.

ETA: except it has to be retroactive as well. This says “moving forward”.

It's retroactive.

NFFC Employee Fired After Illegal Move Was Detected - Page 3 - NFFC Message Boards

nffcforums.shgn.com

Oh good - thanks for the clarification. Hugely important.

I really feel for the folks behind the NFFC. This is going to be a massive undertaking, and restoring people’s faith is probably 90% of the challenge.

Could take years to recover.

ETA: Just got an official email from the about the situation. Good on them - that’s the right thing to do.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

The email:

NFFC UPDATE​

Greetings NFC customers,

As many of you are aware, we recently learned that a former employee of ours used his access
to our back-end systems to make anomalous lineup changes on behalf of a participant in one of
our NFL playoff fantasy sports contests. While SportsHub understands that it will be subject to
certain inquiry and speculation because of our transparency, our disclosure results from our
voluntary publication of timestamps for each transaction within each of our contests. We
express our thanks to the Ship Chasing crew for its efforts. Based upon our initial internal
investigation, we are taking the appropriate measures. As I hope you can understand, we are as
stunned by these circumstances as you are, and we continue to move forward to remedy the
wrongdoing.

SportsHub takes this matter extremely seriously. Integrity and trust in our people, our company
and our games are paramount to us and our self-reporting, while initially painful is the best
course to regain that trust. We are committed to continuing with our transparency and to
maintain our culture of integrity. For over two decades, NFC has been run with impeccable
integrity by Greg Ambrosius and Tom Kessenich, who remain as dedicated as ever to regaining
the trust of our valued customers. We’ve learned an extraordinarily difficult lesson and are
currently in the process of evaluating all aspects of our fantasy contest operations; including
everything from vetting our employees to ensuring internal controls surrounding game and
finance management will continue to grow stronger to prevent these issues from happening in
the future.

There is still work to be done to determine the full extent of what occurred. To that end, we
have engaged a third party, U.S. Integrity, Inc. (https: www.usintegrity.com) - an industry leader
in integrity gaming investigations and consulting – to investigate and audit our current and prior
contests. Until their investigation is concluded, SportsHub cannot comment further on this
matter. Upon conclusion of the U.S. Integrity investigation, we will disclose their findings and
take appropriate action to remedy this situation. To the extent that the third-party audit
concludes that contest participants have been financially harmed, affected participants will be
made whole. This investigation will take time, and the results will be published as soon as it is
concluded.

In conjunction with the work being done by U.S. Integrity, we will be formalizing our existing
Integrity and Transparency Program. This will be posted to our website as soon as possible. We
will work as quickly as possible to come to a resolution and move forward under the formal
standards of this program.

Sincerely,
Christian Peterson
President
SportsHub Holdings, LLC

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

“Sportshub takes this matter extremely seriously”. I would hope so but this is a common statement when you focked up big time and aren’t sure how to make it go away.

Oh this isn’t going away anytime soon, and no statement no matter how carefully word-smithed is going to help.

But it is damage control, and as I’d mentioned previously, it’s a crucial step towards getting out ahead of it.

The rest is TBD. Actions > words, and all that.

IMO they need to be as transparent as possible - even if (when) that means revealing more instances of malfeasance.

In some cases reparations may have to be made to contestants who were cheated.

But those are bridges that SportsHub/NFFC will have to cross when they come to them.

 

[phandango]

The same player seems to have changed his lineup after lock in a different NFFC playoff contest. (The below tweet quotes another user who found transactions that suggest it's the same scenario as the others. Gretch is one of the Ship Chasing guys.)

https://twitter.com/yardspergretch/status/1750931764015694138?s=46&t=-3IpndNWuR0Gb8f7k4gPqQ

Ben Gretch

@YardsPerGretch

Whole lineup was submitted an hour after lock, including a low-owned Kareem Hunt, who scored Cleveland’s first TD. Then a swap off Hunt to Nico, presumably after Nico’s TD. This sucks.

 

[Dreamer]

Ouch, this is going to bury them. I've been playing fantasy football for 30 years, since before the internet, scoring from the USA today on monday morning with a pencil and pad, and this was the year I finally trusted theses big name contests enough to throw my hat in the ring. Then the FBG NFFC contest got cancelled so I shelved the idea for another year. I doubt this can be repaired. I'm pretty sure this is the tip of the iceberg and I think the response should have been different so far. Shame on them.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

Ouch, this is going to bury them. I've been playing fantasy football for 30 years, since before the internet, scoring from the USA today on monday morning with a pencil and pad, and this was the year I finally trusted theses big name contests enough to throw my hat in the ring. Then the FBG NFFC contest got cancelled so I shelved the idea for another year. I doubt this can be repaired. I'm pretty sure this is the tip of the iceberg and I think the response should have been different so far. Shame on them.

I feel differently. While there’s a possibility that you’re correct, this is an opportunity for NFFC to establish themselves as the most trusted site in FF.

I know that seems counterintuitive, and a lot will depend on how they handle this going forward, but if they do it right, they can absolutely come out stronger for this.

But (and it’s a JLo in her prime-sized but) they need to do it absolutely perfectly. That probably includes reparations, and definitely includes full transparency.

Gonna be fascinating to see how this all shakes out.

As of the moment, I’m still interested in playing with them next year. That could change in the coming weeks/months.

 

[jabarony]

That was a sobering thread to read. I get that there's a lot of money at stake, and the game's integrity was damaged. But people were talking like they found out a good friend was a serial killer. He's ruined his life, he's fighting demons, how can we move forward from this. Are they talking about a fantasy game, or 9/11?

Any time big money is changing hands, you're going to have people looking for an edge, or an opportunity to cheat. Is it really that shocking?

Again, I get that it's a big deal, and people have poured their lives and careers into the game. Now it's threatened because somebody went rogue. But I'm pretty sure nobody died. The lesson for me was that there are people waaay more invested in the game than I am, mentally, emotionally, financially, etc. I need to keep that in mind in the heat of the next playoff race.

Well yeah, when playing for $200K, people take that ish seriously.

I forget what the top Hold ‘Em payout is for the $300 league in question, but it’s substantial.

The last few years for my bday I’ve treated myself to a 3-pack of NFFC leagues.

There are folks with 100+ teams across a dozen contests. To say there’s a chasm between my reaction to this & those folks would likely be a dramatic understatement. Or maybe not.

That said, so long as it’s policed sufficiently, I think it’ll all work out. But it’ll probably get a little ugly as more info comes out, and as more of their customers learn about this.

I’d be willing to bet that only about 20-30% of the NFFC customer base knows this even happened. Like I said, I had to randomly find out on Twitter when Razzball tweeted about it.

The one thing NFFC has going for it is their reputation is very good. Ambrosious isn’t new at this, and as @Joe Bryant pointed out, he’s known for being a top industry person. I’m sure FBG is very selective about who hosts their contests, and they trust NFFC, along with 1000s of FF players for a reason.

I’m hopeful this all gets worked out with a high degree of professionalism to everyone’s satisfaction.

Good points. The real victims are the people who have spent decades building a reputation, just to see one person ruin it. I hope they bounce back.

I probably shouldn't have said anything, since I never play high stakes. Even if it's discretionary money and it's budgeted to be lost...I found I don't enjoy it. The money takes something away for me. If I made 750K a year (I don't), I think a $300 league would still bother me. I'd always remember when that was a lot of money to me. Just don't have the gambling gene, I guess.

I still think some of the responses were over the top, but I get why it's a black mark on a game with a sterling reputation.

I would say the real victims are the customers who lost $ to the internal cheaters. Really anyone ever in any contest with this guy, or guys. Any contest this guy won prizes in should be recalculated and every other player moved up one spot in the standings. Retroactive refunds or prize increases to anyone else in said contests.

 

[Hot Sauce Guy]

I would say the real victims are the customers who lost $ to the internal cheaters. Really anyone ever in any contest with this guy, or guys. Any contest this guy won prizes in should be recalculated and every other player moved up one spot in the standings. Retroactive refunds or prize increases to anyone else in said contests.

Absolutely correct