Adam ‘nbgee12’ Zanzoul, a North American CS2 semi-pro, has been permanently banned from FACEIT for stealing SSDs with Jake ‘Stewie2K’ Yip, Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovač, and Guy ‘NertZ’ Iluz information at IEM Dallas.
G2 Esports won IEM Dallas on June 2, thanks to the help of stand-in Stewie2K. In between NiKo and the team’s matches, nbgee12 snuck into the backstage of IEM Dallas in the dead of night and stole hard drives with their information.
The tournament admins use SSDs to keep players’ in-game settings and other information on hand to plug into on-stage setups and protect the integrity of the competition.
Dust.us has reported that the player has received a permanent ban for the incident as the 19-year-old has a track record of bans for behavior in and out of the server. He was initially banned for five years after the IEM Dallas incident, but it has since been made permanent.
He also called into a stream with North American CS2 pro and streamer Collin ‘CoJoMo’ Moren to discuss the incident in detail. He admitted to sneaking into a restricted area of the Texas event to steal the aforementioned player’s drives.
The now-banned player said he went to the tournament’s location at 4 AM and streamed the caper to an audience on Discord.
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nbgee12 further claimed he was found out by ESL thanks to security footage, banned from the event, and held by local police.
“When [the police] realized I was just a re**** doing re****ed things they didn’t charge me or anything… It was f****** Discord trolling you know what I mean. It wasn’t actually intentionally going over there to f*** with people,” he said on the stream.
The player told Dust2.us that he was under the influence of marijuana at the time of the incident.
“Words cannot adequately express how humiliating and dejecting this has been. I am genuinely disgusted by my behavior and am committed to learning from this experience,” he told the publication.
Nbgee12 has been around the local NA Counter-Strike scene since 2021 and was last seen as a stand-in for Elevate at the American RMR for the PGL Copenhagen Major. But after this incident, the player will probably not get another chance at Counter-Strike glory anytime soon.
