Tristan "Cr8ive" Wade has been around online poker for a long time. I had a bit of an issue with Tristan at the 2010 WSOP, but it had nothing to do with cheating, and has nothing to do with the situation today.
Anyway...
Tristan is still playing online, and entered one of the wsop.com bracelet events near the end of the 2021 World Series. This particular event was a $1k NL Holdem event, and did award a real bracelet. It got 774 entrants, and Tristan finished 8th, so he did make the final table.
While playing, he noticed some odd behavior between two players, who seemed to be colluding. One of them made the final table. Most suspiciously, these suspected colluders disconnected at the same time -- indicating they were in the same place, or were perhaps the same person. Tristan has been trying to get info about this situation from the WSOP for months, and has finally gone public about it.
https://twitter.com/TristanCre8ive/status/1513865358213480450
https://twitter.com/TristanCre8ive/status/1513865365347966981
https://twitter.com/TristanCre8ive/status/1513865372558012416
https://twitter.com/TristanCre8ive/status/1513865375905026049
https://twitter.com/TristanCre8ive/status/1513991007146319880
This is bizarre.
I fully believe Tristan's account of the situation. Indeed, if you look at The Hendon Mob page for this event, 3rd place is now listed as "Unknown Player", which likely means the $61k was confiscated, and the player disqualified. The player who finished 32nd was also listed as "Unknown", as was the 95th place finisher. The 3rd and 32nd finishers were from Germany (I'm sure not a coincidence), and the 95th place finisher was from Lithuania.
Also, if these guys were disqualified for cheating, shouldn't the $66k or so prize money go to the other finishers?
Now support is ghosting Tristan, and refusing to give him answers, which I'm sure is because they don't want to admit what happened.
It doesn't help that wsop.com still does not have a visible manager, since Bill Rini quit. I have theorized that the long-embattled Rini, who handlded criticism extremely poorly, scared the other employees that being the public facing manager would result in Twitter harassment, so therefore everyone just hides in the shadows. That's just my guess, but whatever the situation, it's horrendous for this site not to have a public-facing manager.
I am glad Tristan is going to gaming on this, and I await the result.