“Now don’t you do it again, you little ragamuffins!”
When Trevor “TmarTn” Martin and Tom “ProSyndicate” Cassell were brought in for misrepresentative endorsement, everyone wondered what they’d get. The Guillotine? Hanging? The Chair? The Rack? The Chinese Water Torture? Mere child’s play compared to what surely awaited them.
Dev signed replica WW2 helmet pic.twitter.com/5uMtHneVTH
— TmarTn (@TmarTn) November 2, 2017
A slap on the wrist and a sternly worded warning from the FTC to never do it again. In other words, some weak-ass League of Nations shit.
In addition to owning 42.5% of the CS:GOLotto site, which they herded people to in their own videos, they got a bunch of YouTube friends to do the same (see: above). Considering how much of a hot button issue gambling in games is right now, you’d expect more from the FTC. As a matter of fact, a number of people are understandably pissed about this turn of events. And they voiced their concerns on the FTC site page for the case. Two of the reasonably-sized complaints:
Both Trevor Martin and Thomas Cassell purposelessly deceived their audiences by pretending to have found CSGO Lotto and recommend to use it when in fact they owned it from the beginning. Trevor Martin even went to change the descriptions in his videos after the fact adding a statement acknowledging that he owns the website; however, in his videos, he states the disclosure was there from the beginning which is easily proven false. This attempt to tamper with evidence, but this was not brought up in the filing. I believe this deliberate action deserves a larger punishment than just warnings to not do it again. Thomas Cassell has already gotten in trouble for not disclosing having stake in something he advertises on his videos. A precedent needs to be set in order to stop these malicious acts from further occuring.
– Maloney
I am appalled and disgusted with this ruling. These two deserve a hefty fine, if not jail time, for knowingly misleading their largely adolescent fanbase into using a gambling website that they owned. The items that were being traded on CSGO Lotto had real money value, and these two were pocketing millions from rigging a system that they owned. Not to mention that these two did not have a gambling license and were essentially running an illegal online casino. You must treat this case as you would with unregulated gambling in the real world. As it is, this is merely a slap on the wrist and does nothing to prevent similar activities from occurring in the future.
– Jack Thorpe
So, the little karma Houdini’s get off scot-free. The FTC does the bare minimum to knock the bastards into shape. And a bunch of people are left wondering “why?”
Source: PC Gamer
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