The ex-owner of the now defunct Denial Esports organization has been accused again of charging back payments, this time by their former Call of Duty coach Mickhail ‘Blfire’ Glushenok.
On June 24, Blfire posted a screenshot on Twitter showing that his PayPal account had a negative balance in excess of $2,000.
In the caption of the tweet, the former pro player blamed the overdrawn balance on Zachary Smith, the one-time owner and CEO of Denial Esports, alleging that he had charged back some payments.
“We love chargebacks,” he tweeted. “Shoutout to Zachary A. Smith, AKA 6’5″ fully tatted Denial owner. I’m getting fully tatted and squaring up when I see him.”
We love chargebacks shoutout to Zachary A. Smith aka 6’ 5” fully tatted Denial owner. I’m getting fully tatted and squaring up when I see him. pic.twitter.com/wRMjURJkwb
— Mike (@Blfire) June 24, 2019
Speaking exclusively with Dexerto, Blfire revealed that the charged back payments in question were money he was owed previously, as well as his first month’s salary.
He also posted a follow-up tweet stating that he had kept silent on this hoping that Smith would eventually reimburse him, which apparently hasn’t turned out to be the case.
I kept silent about this for awhile thinking he was a man of his word but instead he changed his number and deactivated his Twitter. I’m not the only one who got charged back, other players have way larger amounts charged back than I do 7k+ etc so this isn’t too bad.
— Mike (@Blfire) June 24, 2019
This isn’t the first time that a former member has accused Denial Esports of charging back on payments.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
On May 28, CoD player Jason ‘Prophet’ Nicoletti posted a similar tweet of his own, claiming that Smith had disputed a payment that had been made out to him several months prior.
Gears of War players FraNChiS and Icy, both of whom have played for Denial in the past, also made similar allegations against a “previous org,” which was later confirmed by a community manager to have been Denial.
Smith, however, denied intentionally charging back any payments, instead claiming that his credit card company had flagged the transactions as “suspicious activities” and disputed them.
The demise of Denial Esports
Following a hiatus from esports due to financial issues, Denial made its way back into the spotlight in early 2019 after having made major changes to its leadership and internal structure.
However, things began to go south again when one of their CoD players from this year, Nathan ‘Natshay’ Dupuis, accused the org of not paying player salaries, which was followed by Overtime eSport claiming that Denial never paid them for them for their CWL Pro League spot.
Facing increasing pressure from former players and public scrutiny, the organization ended up shutting down on May 31, the same day Smith went on a ballistic rant on Twitter leveling major insults against those he felt were responsible for the org’s demise.
As always, we will continue to bring you the latest on this story as more information becomes available.
