CSGOLotto's owners promoted their own betting site as fans — FTC's first influencer case

CSGOLotto offered jackpot and coinflip betting with Counter-Strike weapon skins, taking an 8% fee on betting pools, according to the FTC's later complaint. Trevor 'TmarTn' Martin and Tom 'Syndicate' Cassell, YouTube creators with millions of subscribers, promoted the site with videos of themselves betting and winning. Company formation documents from December 2015 named Martin president and Cassell vice president, each holding a 42.5% stake. An early TmarTn video presented the site as something he had discovered — a video the FTC later cited among promotions that hid his ownership.

The FTC alleged CSGOLotto supplied free skins for the creators' betting sessions, so the 'big win' videos carried none of the financial risk viewers assumed. Some video descriptions carried a sponsorship note, but the agency said the notices sat below the visible description and never mentioned that the men were owners. In summer 2016, YouTuber HonorTheCall examined CSGOLotto's corporate records and exposed the connection; H3H3 Productions amplified it. Both creators apologized — Cassell on Twitter, Martin in a July 2016 video he later removed, telling users he 'was disappointed in it'.

On October 4, 2016, a federal judge dismissed the wider McLeod v. Valve skin-gambling class action, which had named CSGOLotto, Martin and Cassell among the defendants, without deciding whether the site's operations or promotions broke state law. A year later the disclosure issue caught up with them: in September 2017 the FTC announced its first case against individual social-media influencers over CSGOLotto's promotion. The complaint also alleged the company paid other influencers between $2,500 and $55,000, with contracts barring statements that damaged its reputation.

FTC's first-ever complaint against individual social-media influencers; a consent order banning fake-independent endorsements, though it carried no fine.

Each creator held 42.5% of the site while presenting it to millions of subscribers as a discovery they gambled on with their own skins.

The FTC alleged the site supplied free skins for the 'big win' sessions, stripping out the risk that made the content persuasive.

Sponsorship notes in some video descriptions were placed below the visible fold and disclosed sponsorship, not ownership.

The company paid other influencers $2,500 to $55,000 under contracts forbidding reputation-damaging statements, extending the undisclosed-interest pattern across the promotion network.

Ownership is the disclosure that matters most. Audiences forgive a sponsored video; they do not forgive hidden equity, which turns every discovery clip into an enforcement exhibit.

The November 2017 settlement, entered without admitting or denying, prohibited representing endorsers as independent consumers and required clear disclosure of financial connections. There was no fine; the FTC explained it could not impose civil penalties through that action and had no criminal authority, though violating the order could. Valve had already announced on July 13, 2016 that gambling use of Steam's trading systems violated its agreements. The dismissed class action's state-law claims were allowed to proceed in another court; the federal racketeering claim stayed closed.