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Disclaimer: many of you might not have heard of the organizations in this post, so if the shadiness / unprofessional of semiprofessional teams is not of interest to you, just skip this post.
A week or two ago, team 4Not's owner (username: 4NotSamBuca) made a reddit post warning the community about an individual named Dominiquie Lewis, and accusing him of stealing somewhere between $3,000 - $4,000 of prize money from 4Not's LoL team, which he used to manage. This man has several AKAs: Storm, Legacy, and Baylife. As Baylife, he was the owner and general manager of Frost eSports.
Dominiquie Lewis initially denied these allegations, and went on to claim that he never had any association with 4Not's LoL team whatsoever and that he was not Legacy / Storm. However, as soon as we (the players on the Starcraft II A-team for Frost) were made aware of these claims, we started to investigate further, and found conclusive proof that Baylife was in fact the former manager of 4Not's LoL team. Furthermore, SamBuca sent me skypelogs of conversations with Baylife indicating that Baylife had the money and that he was unwilling to transfer it back to 4Not.
Internally, we have come to the conclusion that Baylife used up much, if not all of the stolen money on various Frost eSports related activities, including to fake sponsorships, team t-shirts, and travel / tournament expenses for some of the players.
As a result of this, all Frost eSports teams have disbanded to avoid affiliating themselves with someone who is a scammer, a liar, and a thief. The A-Team roster of myself, Drunkenboi, OneTrickPony, frostSwarm, Moosegills, CCalms, eFeKz, Mahv, and Quix are all either retiring or looking for new teams (with the exception of Drunkenboi, who joined FXO NA - congratulations to him!).
Anyways, I am making this post for two reasons: first, to explain what happened to Frost eSports to those who did not know, and second, to warn the community about Dominiquie Lewis (aka Legacy / Storm / Baylife). It's distinctly possible that he will attempt to continue working in eSports, and we want everyone to know that he is not trustworthy and has a history of stealing / lying.
Within our organization, this news came as a huge surprise to everyone except for one other individual, who had been associated with 4not's LoL team: Louis-Étienne ''Nillem'' Dionne. When we left the team, his response was "so u discovered xD." This implies that he was aware of Baylife's theft and was willingly associating himself with him in spite of that knowledge, possibly even benefiting himself from the stolen prize money. Anyone who would steal prize money from the team they manage, or associate with someone who does with full awareness of that, is a thief and should be shunned from the eSports community.
Thank you to 4nothing and their owner for bringing this issue to our attention, and our deepest apologies to those who were exploited by him. To this day, nobody on 4not's LoL team received even a penny of their prize money. On a personal note, I'm also really sad that this team turned out to be a fraud as we had an awesome roster and were already getting some solid results in team leagues (2nd place in ISTL Season 3 and victories over good European and NA teams like LighT in other tournaments).
tl;dr Dominiquie Lewis stole ~$4,000 in prize money from 4not's LoL team, used it to start up new organization Frost, organization now dead because players found out his past and quit - don't trust him!
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Wow, what a gargantuan douche.
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Holy crap... That's just.... Wow. I wish you guys luck in finding a new (and hopefully less controversial) team.
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o.O Wow, shit seems to have hit the fan. Sorry for all the players involved, and best of luck with your respective futures.
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Holy shit that's bad. How are we going to prevent this from happening again, though? He will change his ID, so he isn't easy to spot (and thus stop) like blackfoger, and he may even not use his real name. He also lost his team, so he can't be tracked through that, either.
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Report him to the FBI cyber crimes division?
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Damn...wish all you guys the best in finding new teams (please don't retire!)
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damn that's rough. best of luck in the future.
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On November 27 2012 13:33 aviator116 wrote: Damn...wish all you guys the best in finding new teams (please don't retire!) lol I think we would have to be pro to retire xD
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money in bank account, does not a skypelog make.
still this sucks. Stealing's bad mmmkay.
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props to you for sticking up and actually abandoning the team he's in!
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On November 27 2012 13:22 Game wrote: Report him to the FBI cyber crimes division?
I think this is under the radar for the FBI, it would be a lawsuit / small claims court case if they were able to take legal action. SamBuca mentioned that they were having a lot of issues because they are a Canadian based organization and it was hard for them to get lawsuits in the US.
On November 27 2012 12:39 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote: Holy shit that's bad. How are we going to prevent this from happening again, though? He will change his ID, so he isn't easy to spot (and thus stop) like blackfoger, and he may even not use his real name. He also lost his team, so he can't be tracked through that, either.
Hopefully, just by having his real name and some information about him it shouldn't be too hard to notice him if he tries to come back. I think it'd be tough / impossible for him to get management positions on any established teams, and if he tries to start a new team, that's just more of his time he's spending before his past catches up to him.
And thanks to everyone who has replied for their kind words and maturity : )
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On November 27 2012 17:55 RemarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2012 13:22 Game wrote: Report him to the FBI cyber crimes division? I think this is under the radar for the FBI, it would be a lawsuit / small claims court case if they were able to take legal action. SamBuca mentioned that they were having a lot of issues because they are a Canadian based organization and it was hard for them to get lawsuits in the US. There is an international organization that takes care of cyber crime.
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Hey guys, I would like to request a bit of your time for you to understand my side of the story regarding my relation with Legacy and Frost eSports. First off, to believe I was willingly cooperating with Legacy (which I wasn't) is one thing but to go and accuse me of possibly benefting of stolen money is another. Before going on any other subject I want to make this clear, I have never touched any money or any goods of 4Not, not even Frost eSports. Now, I defnitely understand you are mad about the situtation, I am in the same boat. Through Legacy and Frost eSports my reputation was ruined without me even acknowledging it. If you guys believe you got fucked over by him, you have no idea how much I did. Legacy was a good friend, I trusted him. When shit hit the fan with Legacy and 4Not I was the first one to message him and ask him about situation. He tried to tell me everything was alright and 4Not just hated him but I always knew something shady happened. Now understand this: after 4Not, my career took a deep fall and I was without any position in the industry. it was honestly a nightmare because of all the time and effort I had put into building myself a career in eSports. Honestly, I was desesperate and Legacy was the only one to offer me a position in Frost eSports even after I had cut most of my connections with him because I was very suspicious about the stolen money fiasco. Humans do errors and that was one for me, I accepted the position even though I knew there was a good chance that this would turn bad for me. It did. I want to insist on the fact that I never got very involved in Frost eSports. I always made sure to keep a certain distance between me and the organization. As ex-Frost players, you guys know. Even though my name was under Frost eSports for a while, I never did much work. Deep down, I knew something was definitely wrong but I decided to stop thinking about it and that was my second error. I should have told the players about Legacy and his actions but I did not and for that I want to deeply apologize. I'm sorry guys. Now, in regards of my comment : "so you discovered xD". I wrote that to one of the players, do not remember which one, as a simple message, it did not imply anything other than the fact that the truth had come back up and it wasn't a surprise to me because I knew one day it would. One more thing, it was honestly difficult for me to say if Frost eSpors was real or fake, throughout the process, I talked to a (so called) RaidCall representative and a (so called) Galaxy representative. Both seemed real but you never know. I still do not know if they were friends of Baylife, his other skype accounts or some other way to deceive the playes and staff. I probably did get deceived but what could I do? I never knew he was that much of a liar. Finally, you can call a fucking idiot, sure, I deserve it. You can call me dumb, yes, that is probably very true, but please, do not put me down with Legacy I never wanted to do any harm to 4Not, I never wanted to do any harm to the players and staff of Frost eSports. I just wanted to be a part of something because I had nothing.
Thanks for reading, Louis-Étienne "Nillem" Dionne
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