On Monday, the 24th of August, 2020, TOURSTAT Invest announced Summer Clash, a VALORANT Tournament with a “3000£” Prize Pool. Well, the obvious first problem is highlighted (the prize pool should read “£3000”). Even with this being such a small mistake, it was suspicious enough for me to start my investigation.
https://twitter.com/hstourstat/status/1297834188335452160
"Saying goodbye to summer! Let's see off the summer with VALORANT tournament!
Prize Pool: 3000£
8 teams
Date: 07.09 - 10.10"
With the help of JuhobOb, we started quickly started questioning ourselves: who is helping produce the event, where the funds are coming from, and whether the business was set up.
As their Twitter suggested, the company is Scottish in nature, however, a quick company house search shows that the company in question does not exist. I interviewed the Tournament Admin and TOURSTAT's representative, Limpopo, asking him whether the company was registered. Not only was it confirmed to me that the company was not registered, but they stated they were “working on it”, which was later contradicted when Limpopo said that they haven’t even applied.
Original Questioning: “Not at the moment, but we are working on it. We are planning a big startup for investments in cybersport, the tournament is one of the promotion opportunities”
Re-asking for evidence of an application of registration: “At the moment we have not applied yet, because it is not so easy in the UK, perhaps we will move to another country and open an offshore. Anyway, I will give you all the information as soon as we apply and register.”
When asking for the funds, I was told the TO’s were paying out of pocket and also in talks with a bookmaker. While a bookmaker may pay, this is a decent amount of capital to spend “from personal money” remembering that the event would not only need to pay out the prize pool, but also would need to pay production, admins, and casters, at the least.
“We finance the project from personal money + we have a sponsor, a bookmaker”
Continuing conversations, I wanted to know about the production. This is when I was told of “Tunder Media and ORC Cup”.
ORCs Cup are a CIS weekly competition that has hosted many teams, such as FishkaVTom, zarplata, and, most notably, last week's winners, FunPlus Pheonix. When reaching out, they stated not to know about the event and that they will not be casting the event.
Thunder Media (“Tunder Media”) is an organization also known for helping produce and organize CIS events in many games. Most recently, they worked with Wave on their VALORANT Invitational event back in June, but have been quiet since. After reaching out on Twitter, Thunder Media stated that they “require full payment upfront” and that “since then there is no reply, so still unaware what will happen”.
“Produced by Tunder Media and ORC Cup” (Later clarified in conversation that “Tunder” is a typo for “Thunder”)
Limpopo also clarified that their sponsor is bookmaker, “OMG Bet”, who are currently banned from view in the UK. Not only this but betting sponsors are currently not allowed by Riot, making this partnership near impossible.
With the morning of Wednesday, I learned that teams were being asked to pay “100 bucks” for an invite. Due to this not being of practice, we asked further, on other accounts for details, this is when we were given a Paypal address, which was one of the coach's email.
I reached out personally to the coach in question, in which I asked him the same questions as every other manager and coach I approached, and his answers shocked me and led me to find out more about Limpopo.
The coach was asked by Limpopo to take Paypal payments and transfer them through the bank, a simple enough task, to which the coach asks, “it is legal?” Limpopo responds saying “of course” and even stating that in his “country, there is no Paypal”. This further shows that TOURSTAT Invest is not UK based. On top of this, the coach also disclosed that he had a call with Limpopo, stating that Limpopo spoke in broken English and was definitely not a Briton.
With all of this, the company is not what it stated it was, and the event starts looking extremely shady. As a new tournament organizer, with no credentials, they had already thrown doubt upon themselves and now, with all the provided evidence above, the event and company are very possibly Fraudulent.
If any evidence is required, I am creating a Google Doc with it all, DM me on @MandeepVAL on twitter for more information.