Tmartn Csgo Lotto

Three of YouTube and Twitch's most popular gaming personalities, Trevor 'TmarTn' Martin, Thomas 'ProSyndicate' Cassell, and Josh 'JoshOG' Beaver, are embroiled a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gambling scandal following improper disclosure of their financial and ownership involvement with betting site CSGO Lotto.

Oct 06, 2016 According to the Daily Dot, the plaintifs were arguing that “CSGO Lotto and one of its owners, Trevor “TmarTn” Martin, had engaged in fraudulent activity so egregious that it violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).”.

CSGOLotto, on the other hand, is a game where players are competing against other players in a lottery-style game. Advance knowledge of outcomes in that scenario would provide an individual with a significant advantage at the expense of other players.
TmarTn’s CSGO lotto apology roundly criticised, then pulled. That at least 75 people appear on the cusp of suing both Martin and CSGO Lotto’s co-owner Thomas ‘ProSyndicate.
We broke down all of the research featured in HonorTheCall’s TmarTn CSGO Lotto exposing video. Popular YouTubers TmarTn and TheSyndicateProject have been caught lying about their ownership of an underaged gambling site. In past videos they have given their young audiences the impression that they were sponsored by this website.

Counter-Strike gambling and betting has come under heavy fire by the community over the past few years because of its lack of regulation. By betting decorative skins that are earned by opening in-game crates (which can then be purchased for money on the Steam marketplace), websites are able to circumvent the category of 'traditional gambling.' Counter-Strike's developer, Valve, has been quiet on the matter.

YouTubers Ethan 'h3h3Productions' Klein and HonorTheCall accused Martin and Cassell of openly promoting the CSGO Lotto site without being forthcoming about their ties within the company. Viewers have also complained about being misled to believe Martin had no prior knowledge of the website. In March, Martin specifically said he 'found a new site' in reference to CSGO Lotto.

Beaver has come under less criticism, primarily because he disclosed a promo deal between his videos and CSGO Lotto. According to the Federal Trade Commission's outline on endorsements, he failed to do so correctly by only putting said sponsorship in the description of his videos.

Martin, Cassell and Beaver are all officers of the company's corporation, which was established in Orlando, Florida, Martin's hometown. Martin currently acts as the company's president, Cassell as vice president, and Beaver as secretary. Martin and Cassell have both failed to notify their viewers of such a link until recently, following the release of HonorTheCall's videos, when Martin said that it was 'no secret' that he and Cassell were owners of CSGO Lotto.

Martin's explanation to fans has changed over time, however. Martin told YouTube channel Scarce that he was not originally involved in CSGO Lotto when he first came in contact with the site. However, according to Florida Department of State's Division of Corporations' online service, Martin was the original incorporator of the business in December 2015.

A large concern is that Martin, Cassell and Beaver would have access to the back end of the CSGO Lotto site due to their ownership. This would allow each of them to know the numbers and potentially rig the winning of a bet for entertainment and promotional purposes on their site, something that fellow Twitch streamer Mohamad 'm0E' Assad recently went under fire for in relation to CSGO Diamonds, another gambling site.

After the release of h3h3Productions's video, Martin began to make all of his videos regarding CSGO Lotto private on YouTube, as well as his vlog defending his nondisclosure of ownership. His Twitter has been relatively silent, aside from a now-deleted Twitlonger statement Monday, which a user managed to cache before its deletion.

'I've admitted to wishing I was more upfront about owning the site,' Martin said in the now-deleted statement. 'It was always public info but I was never very outspoken about it. My idea was to keep business business, while the focus of YouTube was simply making entertaining content. Obviously, that was misleading to viewers and something I very much regret.'

Various attorneys on Twitter, notably Ryan Morrison, also known as VideoGameAttorney, have said that what Martin and Cassell have done is illegal. However, the legal ramifications Martin, Cassell and Beaver will face currently remains unclear.

Answers to all:

1) Yes what the CSGO YT'ers did is illegal
2) Yes they are reported
3) Not helping Bashur
4) I can eat a grande combo solo

- Video Game Attorney (@MrRyanMorrison) July 5, 2016

Martin, for his part, claims in his statement what they did was 'legal' and that conducting business in a legal manner was his company's top priority. Cassell, on the other hand, was more forthcoming with his thoughts on the matter, although he claims he did nothing wrong.

Csgo Coin Flip

I apologize to anyone who feels mislead regarding the ownership of @CSGOLotto. I will always be more transparent from here on out!

- Mr. Syndicate (@ProSyndicate) July 4, 2016

I do however stand very firmly behind the fact that @CSGOLotto has never & will never scam/steal from players.

- Mr. Syndicate (@ProSyndicate) July 4, 2016

I've always disclosed that my CSGO videos were sponsored & even asked a YouTube employee if anything more was needed & they said it wasn't.

- Mr. Syndicate (@ProSyndicate) July 4, 2016

Things might change soon, however, as a Counter-Strike player Michael John McLeod has opened a class-action lawsuit against Valve for allowing an 'illegal online gambling market.' In the suit, McLeod alleges that Valve 'knowingly allowed an illegal online gambling market and has been complicit in creating, sustaining and facilitating that market.'

In an analytics report by Chris Grove from Narus Advisors, CS:GO has made $7.4 billion dollars annually (with 1.9 billion for jackpot sites where players bet skins in lottery-style games).

Until yesterday, if you were to browse the video pages of popular gaming YouTubers Trevor 'TmarTn' Martin and Tom 'Syndicate' Cassell, you'd have found a string of videos about the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gambling site CSGO Lotto. These videos showed the pair gambling weapon skins on the site, which allows anyone over 13 years of age to trade their hard-earned weapon skins for actual money. They often won big, resulting in videos with titles like 'HOW TO WIN $13,000 IN 5 MINUTES.'

Ordinarily, such a video might be regarded as the soft of clickbait you'd see on a banner ad while browsing unscrupulous websites. But, with millions of subscribers, both Martin and Cassell have a captive audience to watch their videos. And now this audience has been turning out in droves to launch allegations of unethical behaviour and lack of disclosure against the two YouTubers.

It turns out the owners of the CSGO Lotto website are none other than Martin and Cassell.

Tmartn Lawsuit

The pair have since made their CSGO Lotto videos private, but the damage has already been done. Martin and Cassell have promoted numerous CSGO Lotto giveaways and made videos showing how players could win cash on the site. Despite serving as owners and vice-presidents of CSGO Lotto since December 2015, at no point in any video did the pair disclose those connections, instead claiming that CSGO Lotto simply sponsored their videos. Martin has promised to issue an official statement about the controversy later today.

In the meantime, he has taken to Twitter and YouTube in an attempt address some of the issues.

'I've admitted to wishing I was more upfront about owning the site,' reads a now deleted post. 'It was always public info but I was never very outspoken about it. My idea was to keep business business, while the focus of YouTube was simply making entertaining content. Obviously that was misleading to viewers and something I very much regret. I've never been perfect and I 100% own up to that mistake. That being said, everything we've done up until this point has been legal, that has been a #1 priority of ours. The day it becomes illegal is the day we cease activity.'

Unfortunately for Martin, research undertaken by h3h3Productions and PCGamer has found no evidence of his interest in CSGO Lotto being declared anywhere. A vague statement (found via the Wayback Machine) saying 'Video made possible by CSGO Lotto' was added to some videos after they were uploaded. Even worse for Martin is a transcript from another video, which reads:

'We found this new site called CSGO Lotto—so I'll link it down in the description if you guys want to check it out. We were betting on it today and I won a pot of like $69 or something like that, so it was a pretty small pot, but it was like the coolest feeling ever. I ended up following them [CSGO Lotto] on Twitter and stuff, and they hit me up and they're talking to me about potentially doing like a skin sponsorship...'

Other prominent YouTubers have since been dragged into the controversy. Josh 'JoshOG' Beaver has admitted to owning equity in CSGO Lotto, while also failing to disclose his 'sponsorship.' He has now begun removing videos that reference CSGO Lotto. Another YouTuber, PsiSyndicate, admitted that several of his own CS:GO weapon skin videos were rigged and created in association with another CS:GO betting site called SteamLoto. He claims that he was approached by the site, which provided him with valuable weapon skins to 'randomly' unbox. He then acted as if they were random wins.

For a brief period, users clicking through to the CSGO Lotto from Steam were shown a warning that the site may engage in phishing, scamming, spamming, or delivering malware. However, Valve has since removed the warning.

This isn't the first time that YouTubers—and Cassell in particular—have been in trouble over a lack of disclosure. Last year Cassell was found to have been promoting multiplayer horror game Dead Realm on his channel without declaring his financial ties to the game's publisher 3BlackDot, which was founded with the help of Cassell and other video-makers a year earlier. Meanwhile, a number of YouTubers have faced criticism after it was discovered that the company Mondelēz had paid them to promote Oreo biscuits in 'Oreo Lick Race' videos. Few participants disclosed the deal.

At the time, the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that it 'pays to be honest,' before banning the campaign.

'It is perfectly legitimate for vloggers (or bloggers, tweeters) to enter into a commercial relationship and be paid to promote a product, service or brand,' the ASA noted at the time. 'But when that commercial relationship is in place then the onus is on the advertiser, and by extension the vlogger, to be upfront about it and clearly disclose the fact that they’re advertising. We're going to be communicating clearly to advertisers the outcome of this ruling and raising awareness amongst vloggers of the need to disclose when the content of their blogs is paid for.'

Aside from the lack of disclosure on YouTube—which would clearly violate the ASA's guidelines—both Cassell and Martin could face criticism over founding CSGO Lotto in the first place. A recent report from Bloomberg claimed virtual weapons were turning gamers as young as 13 into serious gamblers, and that the betting boom generated as much as $2.3 billion (£1.75B) last year. Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in June by CS:GO player Michael John McLoed alleges that Valve allowed an illegal online gambling market to develop.

Tmartn Csgo Lotto Lawsuit

'In the e-sports gambling economy, skins are like casino chips that have monetary value outside the game itself because of the ability to convert them directly into cash,' the suit reads. 'In sum, Valve owns the league, sells the casino chips, and receives a piece of the casino's income stream through foreign websites in order to maintain the charade that Valve is not promoting and profiting from online gambling, like a modern-day Captain Renault from Casablanca. That most of the people in the CS:GO gambling economy are teenagers and under 21 makes Valve’s and the other defendants' actions even more unconscionable.'

Tmartn Cs Go Betting

Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit, it's extremely likely that the controversy surrounding Martin and Cassell will escalate beyond the relative safety of YouTube. And when it does, expect a whole lot more YouTubers to come forward with undisclosed deals.