Fantasy Football Website Employee Fired After Investigation into Cheating Scandal

Collusion between a fantasy football player and a now ex-employee of a fantasy sports operator has been discovered in the National Fantasy Football Championship Post-Season Hold 'Em Contest, which features a grand prize of $150,000.

ESPN's David Purdum relayed a statement from NFFC founder Greg Ambrosius on the matter.

"Recently, with help from reporting by a public source, we successfully revealed a post-deadline move in one of our NFFC Post-Season Hold 'Em contests that was detected and quickly confirmed, resulting in SportsHub being able to take immediate action to resolve the issue without any impact to the results of the contest.

"As a result of its internal investigation, an employee was terminated and a contest participant has been banned from further play on our platforms."

The contest's concept is as follows, per its website:

"The NFFC Post-Season Hold 'Em Contests are national contests with grand prizes of $125,000 and $50,000. There is no draft and no salary cap with these contests. Just pick one player from each of 12 playoff teams to start out, earn multiplier points each round those players are on your roster and pick up new players when you lose players. It's as easy as that and fun."

In essence, a player's lineup changed after a pair of deadlines both during the wild-card round and the divisional round in order to swap in players who had scored more points.

Purdum summarized the issue:

"An hour into the second of two wild-card games on Jan. 20, the user switched Dolphins running back Raheem Mostert for Packers running back Aaron Jones. In the first game, Mostert rushed for 33 yards on eight carries in Miami's loss to the Chiefs. Jones got off to a hot start against the 49ers in the late game and finished with 108 yards rushing in the Packers' loss.

"The next week, in the divisional round, the same contestant switched out Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice for Travis Kelce -- after the Kansas City star tight end scored a touchdown in their win over the Bills, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation."

Jeff Edelstein of Rotogrinders published a thorough breakdown of the scandal and noted how the user was caught. In essence, the folks at the Ship Chasing podcast, who are in the contest, noted the player had swapped out Rice for Kelce after the Chiefs vs. Bills game had already started.

Ship Chasing broke down the issue in detail.

The contestant has been disqualified from the tournament, which will go on. The employee in question has been fired.

"Nothing is more important than the integrity of a pay-to-play contest," Ambrosius told Purdum over the phone Thursday.

"We have built up 20-plus years of integrity through transparency and everything we've done. And, by one action, it's put all of it in question. It's put me and everybody associated with our company in question.

"We're doing everything we can to make sure that we know everything about what happened, let people know, and to make sure it never happens again."

The contest will still continue Sunday for the AFC and NFC Championship Games.