TL;DR: DT Papa Chau, ENX k3soju, and ENX Impactful are being penalized for Elo Boosting.

CONTEXT

On June 10, we conducted a sweep of accounts to check for Account Sharing and Elo Boosting.  On June 16, a secondary sweep was conducted that resulted in additional account bans.  The two sweeps included accounts belonging to John “Papa Chau” Le, Michael “k3soju” Zhang, and Josh “Impactful” Mabrey.  All three players’ accounts were found to be in violation of rules concerning Elo Boosting. Papa Chau and k3soju were both found to have been boosting for a brief period, while Impactful was found to have boosted significantly more than the other two players.

As defined in the Global Penalty Index, Elo Boosting is defined as assuming control of another person’s account for the purpose of raising their ranked queue rating in exchange for material personal gain.  When there is no material gain, using another person’s account constitutes Account Sharing, which carries a lesser penalty per the North American Penalty Index.

As a reminder, there is no minimum number of games required to be played, nor a minimum amount of Elo gain necessary to qualify as Elo Boosting. An attempt to boost Elo need not be successful in order to qualify as a rule violation.

RULING

Per the Global Penalty Index, Elo Boosting carries a suspension range of 3-20 competitive months. Papa Chau and k3soju will be penalized with the minimum suspension of 3 competitive months.  Impactful will be suspended for 4 competitive months.

Papa Chau and k3soju were suspended on June 10.  They will each be up for review on September 10, 2016.

Impactful was suspended on June 16.  He will be up for review on October 16, 2016.

Given the conclusive evidence against each of these players, they were suspended immediately upon discovery while League officials sought to complete the wider Elo Boosting investigation. Now that the full investigation has been completed, the full suspension has been levied and the ruling posted.

RELEVANT RULES

From the CS Rules:

9.2.7 Player Behavior Investigation

If CS or Riot determines that a Team or Team Member has violated the Summoner’s Code, the LoL Terms of Service, or other rules of LoL, CS officials may assign penalties at their sole discretion.

Q&A

What about other recently banned players?

Esports rulings are only made against players who are, or are attempting to become, an official Team Member in a Riot-affiliated competition. While some of the other players banned may have been involved in Account Sharing or Elo Boosting, they will not be added to the ruling until and unless they attempt to join a team in a Riot-affiliated competition, at which point they would be further investigated and dealt with accordingly. No other professional player, either in CS or LCS, was determined to be involved in Elo Boosting.

What happens to players who were only account sharing?

All players implicated in account sharing received a first and final warning against further account sharing, the minimum punishment per the NA Penalty Index.  These warnings are listed on the CS Penalty Tracker and LCS Penalty Tracker respectively.