'Wouldn't surprise me if they have match fixed against us': Looking at the SENZA cheating accusations and more

The Russian organisation SENZA has been under constant fire recently for suspicious activity from their former player Kirsan “byek” Ivanov. In one of their recent games at the CCT Season 3 Europe Series 3 Closed Qualifier, an unknown player was observed playing on byek’s account, which was caught on the player camera, which resulted in the Counter-Strike community coming together to voice their displeasure on the matter.

In the light of recent events, Dust2 India has received more information about the matter including potential evidence linked to the team's alleged match-fixing.

Post the current wave of accusations, SENZA revealed that they have conducted an internal investigation on the byek matter. They revealed that the player in the photo shared online doing rounds is something they have no idea who it is and is doing their own investigation into the matter. Amid allegations of using a fake player cam, another image surfaced showing byek allegedly using radar hacks while playing. SENZA denied the claims on the grounds that the monitor in the image did not match the monitor on broadcast.

They also revealed that there was 3 instances of account sharing by byek whilst playing for -72c and also have been working with CCT to investigate the matter. With byek not willing to co-operate, SENZA has announced that they have fined him on legal grounds and have removed him from the team as well. Speaking about the use of radar or other third-party programs, SENZA stated that they do not have 100% confirmation about the use of third-party programs and are investigating the matter.

Dust2 India has received leads from a source (who wishes to remain unamed), who has already taken the matter to the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC), and stated that the match-fixing allegations against byek and 1nhuman were there previously as well, when they were representing -72c. The source provided Dust2 India with images of betting slips that predicted the scores of -72c’s game against CPH Wolves at the CCT Season 3 Europe Series 3 Closed Qualifier. In the game, -72c lost 13-8 on Dust2 despite an early 7-0 lead. The betting slips also indicated multiple bets placed on the score line going from 0-7 to 13-8, 1-7 to 13-8, and 2-7 to 13-8. The bets were cancelled, which the source claims happened after the match-fixing was exposed and the team was blacklisted.

CPH Wolves, who played against -72c at the CCT Season 3 Europe Series 3 Closed Qualifier, had their coach ko5te, talk about their experience playing against the Russian team. The Danish coach shared his thoughts about that game, which CPH Wolves had won 2-0.

So at the moment I hadn't thought about it. After the match, during the evaluation I said well played to the boys because we hadn't practiced Dust 2 at that time and were very bad at it. One of my players said "What do you mean well played? (said with a smile), “these guys can’t hit me". I have, however seen lots of clips from them from other teams where they have openly cheated against them. Among other things against kONO and HEROIC Academy. But cheating and match fixing go hand in hand. So it wouldn't surprise me if they have match fixed against us.
ko5te

THE EVIDENCE AGAINST THE ALLEGED CHEATING AND FIXING CLAIMS

The source claims that players byek, 1nhuman, Forzetsky, and timeagento were involved in cheating and match-fixing. The only player who the source couldn't find evidence against was Melanta. The source also provided the argument against byek's match fixing, stating that his ping fluctuated between 70 or 80 to 160-170, despite his official residency being far-east Russia, alleging that someone else took over his account mid series or mid maps to play on lesser ping. This was seen in their match against ENCE at Exort Proving Grounds S2 but hasn't not been proven yet.

As we can clearly see here from the betting slips provided, which are just a small portion of the actual ones as it's impossible to obtain all of them, they were placed on a correct score and sometimes on match result or round wins. It's hard to believe that this isn't match-fixing.
When we pair up these evidences with radar usage and in-game usage it's clear that anonymous team like -72C, aka ROSY, aka SENZA, are just a group of players (at least 8 known players) who use cheats to gain unfair advantage, bet on themselves using the best possible chances as they have unfair advantage and do account sharing which can be proved by Valve (the best example is byek who resides in far east Russia but in-game he has ping as low as someone who plays from European part of Russia or closer). They have been blacklisted by most of the betting sites already but due to frequent name-changes and roster moves they reappear from time to time.

They've been warned to use cameras which just further solidified community's opinion as they used actors in front of the screen. We don't have to be an experts to see that hand-head movement of the person who pretends to be clutching in Dust 2 A site video isn't matching his actual actions in-game.

The other problem is tournament organizer's inability to remove them from the competition. If they do so, they need to circumvent the VRS invite system and will be in danger of losing ranked status, so they just to opt to keep this cheating team in the end to be competitive with other tournament organizers even knowing what SENZA is doing. Unfortunately Valve's inaction led to them gaining enough VRS points to regularly play CCT and other known Tier-2 tournaments. Usually those tournaments are the ones that are using Akros Anti-Cheat (AC) which they can bypass easily while others are forfeits with the same excuses. When AC works as intended they lose all of their matches in a convincing fashion.
The source alleges SENZA has been match-fixing, cheating for some time now

COMMUNITY OUTRAGE FALLING ON DEAF EARS

The community has been vocal about their feelings about the SENZA players. Known Counter-Strike content creator renyan made a video about SENZA's alleged cheating earlier in the year while most recently birdfromsky, who is the IGL of kONO also called out the team on Twitter, vocally sounding out his displeasure about the way the team goes about their business.

Dust2.us's Editor in Chief, Jeffrey 'MnmzzzCS' Moore also reached out to SENZA's owner in light of the recent allegations, asking him about the fake player cam allegations but was met with reply that didn't answer the question.

Earlier in the year, ENCE's analyst Fisic0 had also voiced his discontent about the SENZA players, whilst they were under the ROSY moniker.

*Dust2 India will continue to report on the accusations against SENZA and follow up with the story as and when there is an update