DraftKings Employee Ethan Haskell Caught Cheating

[garrett]

On the speculation that Draftkings employees won ONLY .3% or 6-10 Million on fanduel, per some spokeslady when asked on whim.

I think this is a grossly lower number than it actually is. I think the employees and their associates (RotoGrinders/writers/friends/families) have won probably no less than DOUBLE that. That is a Conservative number imo so it doesnt sound even more awful, which it most likely is. Keep in mind these ratholes go DEEP here (unregulated). We aren't talking about just a particular employee or 10 who binked 6 Million. What about their friends after all is (hopefully) reverse-engineered in time we find out 3 friends received them lineups also. And only maybe had a player or two different but cleaned up huge scores also. Also people who benefitted (from Rotogrinders) by receiving this insider information also.

I think the .3% # is grossly underestimating what it really probably is. When you consider the people they also relayed the vital data too, who also won if there was someday down the road a way to actually come close to quantifying how much was actually won by this insider information since the games inception I think it would be mind-blowing to some people.

Draftkings was purposefully running contests with grossly skewed top heavy payouts constantly like this-

buy-in $3

1st- $100,000
2nd- $10,000

When you have a gap of $90,000 from 1st to 2nd place payouts in an event which also includes 'uncapped entries', you are asking for that to be gamed. Factor in some had the ability to create lineups who also had and play with massive bankrolls, you damn well knew you were creating a game that benefitted the top 1% and thats pathetic.

The fact they never leveled the payouts like any normal contests should be paid out for so long always WREAKED to me, that it was that way for the mass entry, high volume huge bankroll players to dominate. While being able to cleverly boast that they are running these 'awesome' and 'MASSIVE' big field contests, which was literally just a ruse and trap for these 'pros/insiders' to spit game all over. The casual joe who signed up on ESPN after seeing a commercial of course wouldn't understand that was the reason behind it, and paying out 10x more for 1st then 2nd was only to benefit the top .1% of 'pros' and no one else.

They better wake up now and start to correct all of these scummy and glaringly obvious, nefarious practices now because you all are risking the game so many of us enjoy out of your own greed and selfishness. So wake up and start acting like businessmen who care about your entire playing base, and not just the scummiest of it in DFS, the 'top' 1%.

The game has literally been designed to be able to be dominated by the top 1% and it needs to stop. It is awful ecology and is not sustainable over the long-run so it needed to stop and thankfully this may be the reason they do it now.

[dwai]

i understand there is skill involved, research and what have you, however, how is this not gambling? how is this legal? i know they squeezed it in, in the uigea but i mean come on, poker is more skill than luck compared to this. I WANT TO PLAY POKER GOD DAMMIT WITH MY OWN MONEY HOW IS THIS BULLSHIT LEGAL?

[garrett]

On the speculation that Draftkings employees won ONLY .3% or 6-10 Million on fanduel, per some spokeslady when asked on whim.

I think this is a grossly lower number than it actually is. I think the employees and their associates (Employees/RotoGrinders/writers/friends/families) have won probably no less than DOUBLE that. That is a Conservative number imo so it doesn't sound even more awful, which it most likely is. Keep in mind these ratholes go DEEP here (unregulated). We aren't talking about just a particular employee or 10 who binked 6 Million. What about their friends, family, cousins and the rest. What happens if after all is (hopefully) reverse-engineered in time, we find out 3 friends or family consistently received 'winning lineups' lineups also. And maybe only had a player or two different, but cleaned up huge scores also. Also people who benefitted (from Rotogrinders) by receiving this insider information also like non-employee types from RotoGrinders.

I think the .3% # is grossly underestimating what it really probably is. When you consider it is possible or probable that people also relayed/shared this vital data to others who also won. If there is someday down the road a way to actually quantify how much was actually won by insiders at DFS sites (employees/RotoGrinders/friends/family) I think it would be mind-blowing to some people.

Draftkings was purposefully running contests with grossly skewed top heavy payouts constantly like this-

buy-in $3

1st- $100,000
2nd- $10,000

When you have a gap of $90,000 from 1st to 2nd place payouts in an event which also includes 'uncapped entries', you are asking for that to be gamed. Factor in some had the ability to create lineups with this privileged information, who also play with massive bankrolls and you damn well knew you were creating a game that benefitted the top 1% and thats wrong and pathetic.

The fact they never leveled the payouts like any normal contests should be paid out for so long always WREAKED to me. It is that way for one reason the mass entry, high volume huge bankroll players to dominate. What some call the 'pros' or top 1%. While being able to cleverly boast that they are running these 'awesome' and 'MASSIVE' big field contests, which is literally just a ruse and a trap for these 'pros/insiders' to spit game all over. The casual joe who signed up on ESPN after seeing a commercial of course, wouldn't understand that was the reason behind it and paying out 10x more for 1st then 2nd was only to benefit the top .1% of 'pros' and no one else.

They better wake up now and start to correct all of these scummy and glaringly obvious, nefarious practices now because you all are risking the game so many of us enjoy out of your own greed and selfishness. So wake up and start acting like businessmen who care about your entire playing base, and not just the scummiest of it in DFS, the 'top' 1%.

The game has literally been designed to be able to be dominated by the top 1% and it needs to stop. It is awful ecology and is not sustainable over the long-run so it needed to stop and thankfully this may be the reason they do it now.

[Sanlmar]

I can't get over the timing of this week's Fortune magazine cover story. Released just before scandal.

"How Jason. Robins is blowing up the $15 Billion world of fantasy sports"

Prophetic

As most people know. Ignore the media. They will get you killed. Cover of Time usually spells a top.

[DRK Star]

I think it had something to do with sneaking laws into the UIGEA where they could not wager on individuals, but it could be a group of people. It also had to be a scenario where it was a fixed amount of a sweepstakes prize, and not scaled prize levels depending on the amount of people entering.

Yeah, I think Garett nails it...there has to be tons of friends who were given info, or the employees had their friends/family/girlfriends create other accounts.

[Sanlmar]

Of course, regulation must be done properly. So far it has been a mess with online poker, but that's because it was hastily thrown together and the regulations were written by idiots who didn't understand online poker properly.

Anyway, I think some changes will be coming soon.

US lawmakers cannot create sensible "light regulation". Just not in their range and a decade has proven me right. Our form of government does not lend itself to this sort of thing.

What makes this different are the mom & Apple pie institutions that have invested, NFL & MLB. Mediocre NFL will suffer a huge hit without fantasy.

Portal to legalized sports betting or total ban? Rhetorical question. You know the answer too.

Of course, "changes are coming soon".

The idealism isn't attractive. Grow up.

Preet Bharara is already gunning for NFL over Toradol and all that shit.

[Dan Druff]

On the speculation that Draftkings employees won ONLY .3% or 6-10 Million on fanduel, per some spokeslady when asked on whim.

I think this is a grossly lower number than it actually is. I think the employees and their associates (RotoGrinders/writers/friends/families) have won probably no less than DOUBLE that. That is a Conservative number imo so it doesnt sound even more awful, which it most likely is. Keep in mind these ratholes go DEEP here (unregulated). We aren't talking about just a particular employee or 10 who binked 6 Million. What about their friends after all is (hopefully) reverse-engineered in time we find out 3 friends received them lineups also. And only maybe had a player or two different but cleaned up huge scores also. Also people who benefitted (from Rotogrinders) by receiving this insider information also.

I think the .3% # is grossly underestimating what it really probably is. When you consider the people they also relayed the vital data too, who also won if there was someday down the road a way to actually come close to quantifying how much was actually won by this insider information since the games inception I think it would be mind-blowing to some people.

Draftkings was purposefully running contests with grossly skewed top heavy payouts constantly like this-

buy-in $3

1st- $100,000
2nd- $10,000

When you have a gap of $90,000 from 1st to 2nd place payouts in an event which also includes 'uncapped entries', you are asking for that to be gamed. Factor in some had the ability to create lineups who also had and play with massive bankrolls, you damn well knew you were creating a game that benefitted the top 1% and thats pathetic.

The fact they never leveled the payouts like any normal contests should be paid out for so long always WREAKED to me, that it was that way for the mass entry, high volume huge bankroll players to dominate. While being able to cleverly boast that they are running these 'awesome' and 'MASSIVE' big field contests, which was literally just a ruse and trap for these 'pros/insiders' to spit game all over. The casual joe who signed up on ESPN after seeing a commercial of course wouldn't understand that was the reason behind it, and paying out 10x more for 1st then 2nd was only to benefit the top .1% of 'pros' and no one else.

They better wake up now and start to correct all of these scummy and glaringly obvious, nefarious practices now because you all are risking the game so many of us enjoy out of your own greed and selfishness. So wake up and start acting like businessmen who care about your entire playing base, and not just the scummiest of it in DFS, the 'top' 1%.

The game has literally been designed to be able to be dominated by the top 1% and it needs to stop. It is awful ecology and is not sustainable over the long-run so it needed to stop and thankfully this may be the reason they do it now.

We have no way to find out, but I don't think the super-top-heavy 1st place payout is a conspiracy.

I think it was a marketing gimmick, so the average DFS fish watching ads will say, "Wow!!! $100k for first for daily fantasy sports?? I gotta sign up for this!"

I do think it's very possible that the employees there recognized what a huge opportunity this was, given the top heavy payouts, and that was further incentive for them to cheat -- even if on a competing site.

[Dan Druff]

i understand there is skill involved, research and what have you, however, how is this not gambling? how is this legal? i know they squeezed it in, in the uigea but i mean come on, poker is more skill than luck compared to this. I WANT TO PLAY POKER GOD DAMMIT WITH MY OWN MONEY HOW IS THIS BULLSHIT LEGAL?

There wasn't daily fantasy sports in 2006, when the UIGEA was written. The first known DFS site was in 2007, and it didn't get big until about 4-5 years ago.

Before that, fantasy leagues were yearlong commitments, and were generally groups of friends playing one another. However, there were also large pool, entry-fee, yearlong fantasy sports tournaments on large sites, and these were quite popular.

It was carved out of the UIGEA so as to prevent a backlash from people who simply wanted to continue their longstanding hobby of fantasy sports tournaments with a prizepool.

The carveout was stated as follows:

... fantasy sports games, educational games, or any online contest that has an outcome that reflects the relative knowledge of the participants, or their skill at physical reaction or physical manipulation (but not chance), and, in the case of a fantasy or simulation sports game, has an outcome that is determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of sporting events, including any non-participant's individual performances in such sporting events.

In order to prevent fantasy sports from becoming too much like gambling, the law also stated that the prizepool had to be fixed and known before the start of the contest, and not related to the number of entrants or the buyin amount.

Prizes and awards offered to winning participants are established and made known to the participants in advance of the game or contest and their value is not determined by the number of participants or the amount of any fees paid by those participants.

With the hastily-drafted UIGEA, lawmakers thought that the above was enough to separate fantasy sports from gambling, and envisioned that they were only excepting large fantasy contests with a fixed prizepool, and that there weren't enough of them (or high enough stakes) to give anyone the opportunity to really gamble.

Unfortunately, as with all exceptions, smart people found a way to utilize them to change the spirit of what was allowed.

In this case, the idea of "daily" fantasy sports was born, where one could enter countless competitions at once, and to where the length of the contests were as short as a day, rather than an entire season. This now made it much more like gambling, and it became possible for the average person to not only develop a habit doing it, but to lose large sums of money while doing so.

So what was originally "Let a bunch of people enter a yearly contest for $20 with the chance to win $100,000" became "Let anyone gamble on fantasy sports' daily outcomes with the chance to easily lose thousands of dollars in a short time."

This also completely changed the landscape of these fantasy sports contests, and their size grew exponentially. Not only was the money changing hands much greater, but internal datamining became that much more of an advantage for anyone who wanted to abuse it.

In short, we now have a large, unregulated DFS gambling industry that makes up its own rules, and as we have seen, that's a disaster.

[Dan Druff]

Of course, regulation must be done properly. So far it has been a mess with online poker, but that's because it was hastily thrown together and the regulations were written by idiots who didn't understand online poker properly.

Anyway, I think some changes will be coming soon.

US lawmakers cannot create sensible "light regulation". Just not in their range and a decade has proven me right. Our form of government does not lend itself to this sort of thing.

What makes this different are the mom & Apple pie institutions that have invested, NFL & MLB. Mediocre NFL will suffer a huge hit without fantasy.

Portal to legalized sports betting or total ban? Rhetorical question. You know the answer too.

Of course, "changes are coming soon".

The idealism isn't attractive. Grow up.

Preet Bharara is already gunning for NFL over Toradol and all that shit.

You always bristle at my suggestion for "light regulation", but you never offer an alternative aside from the free market taking care of self-regulation.

This despite the fact that you are a poker player, have closely followed the various huge scandals over the years, and have seen proof positive that self-regulation does not work when such large sums of money are involved.

I will give you that the government is not good at light regulation, but the reform needs to come there (where light regulation is attempted and becomes the norm), rather than just throwing up our hands, conceding that we can't regulate effectively, and basically let the thieves continue stealing.

The bottom line is that government regulation of these industries is the lesser of two evils, and it CAN be done right.

Notice that the Nevada casinos are all under government regulation, and that generally goes pretty well. It's not perfect, but I can assure you that we would have FAR more shadiness in the industry if no such regulation existed.

The government is just a bit behind the times with effective online regulation, and they need to get up to speed.

[Shizzmoney]

The public won’t mourn the loss of daily fantasy, because there’s nothing quite so American as the paranoia that someone, somewhere is getting rich unfairly, and it’s not you. But it will be a shame, because whatever fills its void in that shadowy unregulated zone between fantasy and betting will likely be much sleazier. There was the chance here to usher in comprehensive, rational legislation that would allow for safe, secure, and harmless sports betting, until DraftKings and FanDuel got too careless and too greedy. Instead, another crappy scam will pop up in daily fantasy’s place and then be beaten down in turn, all because the government and the sports leagues refuse to treat Americans like adults.

http://deadspin.com/how-daily-fantas...ium=socialflow

[chinamaniac]

There is still no proof of insider info being used as far as I am aware. I could be wrong but this seems to be the media and people jumping all over this.

I'm not saying it couldn't be happening or didn't happen but is there proof that it is happening or happened? The stuff that kid Ethan posted was not that public knowledge at the time and then he won on Fanduel?

But the # of saying Draftkings employees won xxx at fanduel is just stupid because they are only talking about payouts here. it is like the old hendon mob thing where some guys have 10 million in tourney scores where they are breakeven players etc..

[ThreeBet]

I was just listening to local talk radio about this and it was beyond cringe worthy. They have no idea what they're talking about as far as how the "cheating" occurred, but my worry is most people will think like them and just see the word CHEATING and make up a bunch of cheating scenarios that never even existed.

[Suicide King]

This just in, chinamaniac works for fan duel

[Shizzmoney]

First class action lawsuit has been filed against DK/FD

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/PPVSRB/status/652217189693587456

[BeerAndPoker]

^^^ - We knew it was coming. This is just the start and it will be interesting to see what more "findings" happen over the next several months.

[Shizzmoney]

From LSR:

The filing came in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and it names both FanDuel and DraftKings as defendants. It is titled, “Johnson v. Fanduel, Inc. et al.” The listed plaintiff is Adam Johnson, a resident of Kentucky.
At issue in the case is the access to data that could have affected game integrity at the DFS sites. You can see in the filing in its entirety here.
There are seven claims against the two DFS sites. According to the filing, the counts include:
Negligence
Fraud and misrepresentation
Violation of Kentucky Consumer Protection Act
Civil conspiracy
Violation of the New York Deceptive Act
Violation of the New York False Advertising Law
Unjust enrichment

http://www.legalsportsreport.com/484...el-draftkings/

[Dan Druff]

There is still no proof of insider info being used as far as I am aware. I could be wrong but this seems to be the media and people jumping all over this.

I'm not saying it couldn't be happening or didn't happen but is there proof that it is happening or happened? The stuff that kid Ethan posted was not that public knowledge at the time and then he won on Fanduel?

But the # of saying Draftkings employees won xxx at fanduel is just stupid because they are only talking about payouts here. it is like the old hendon mob thing where some guys have 10 million in tourney scores where they are breakeven players etc..

It doesn't matter if there is proof that they used the info for profit.

It matters that they COULD have, and it further matters that circumstantial evidence shows that they did.

At the very least, we have evidence that:

1) DraftKings employees (though we're not sure how many) had access to very valuable info
-and-
2) DraftKings employees who had the access played on FanDuel and did really well

That by itself is a huge scandal, even if it turns out that it was a sheer coincidence that they had access to such data and also kicked ass on FanDuel.

[Shizzmoney]

LOL

DK/FD terms of use that do not allow class actions. Motion to dismiss likely to be filed by defendants.

[GambleBotsSatire]

DaddyFatStack always seemed like a nice guy I can't believe he would be into this sort of illegal activity.

[mulva]

how does mlb and the nfl support and sign off on this. it's nothing but gambling and scammy people.