CS2 pro gets permanently banned by ESL after stealing SSDs at IEM Dallas

Adam "nbgee12" Zanzoul, a 19-year-old CS2 pro from North America, was caught trespassing and stealing SSDs from fellow professionals at IEM Dallas.

The story was first reported by Dust2.us, HLTV's vertical in North America. ESL, the organizer of IEM Dallas, saw via the camera circuit of the event the CS2 pro had trespassed an "unsecured backstage production area" and stolen SSDs.

The Dallas Police Department detained Zanzoul in the precinct, but they didn't press any charges against him. Instead, ESL has handed him a lifetime ban that should end his professional career in CS2 esports.

While Dust2.us confirmed the story with their own sources, Zanzoul also confessed in an hour-long interview with fellow pro Collin "CoJoMo" Moren on June 4.

Zanzoul told CoJoMo he arrived in Dallas on Thursday, June 30 to meet with some friends, but as his friends wouldn't show up until Friday, he joined a Discord server and headed to the IEM Dallas venue at 4 a.m.

While he was streaming on Discord, Zanzoul accessed the area where the SSDs were located and claimed he took SSDs used by fellow CS2 pros Jake "Stewie2K" Yip, Nikola "NiKo" Kovač, and Guy "NertZ" Iluz. During tournaments, each pro have their SSD as they need to store their in-game settings and the tournament organizer must protect the competitive integrity of the tournament and quickly swap the SSDs in between matches.

Zanzoul was detained by police officers after ESL saw that he stole the SSDs from IEM Dallas and the CS2 pro claimed that neither of them pressed charges against him, and simply banned him from the event and later on, from FACEIT as well.

During the interview with CoJoMo, Zanzoul claimed he was under the influence of cannabis and thought he deserves a lesser punishment as he was simply "trolling."

Zanzoul's history as a CS2 pro before this SSD theft isn't vast. The 19-year-old has mostly hanged around the lower echelons of North America's CS2 scene and most notably attended the RMR event for the PGL Copenhagen Major in March as a stand-in for Elevate.

Mere two months before the IEM Dallas incident, Zanzoul saw ESL reverse a permanent ban handed out for attempted matchfixing in FPL-C qualifiers.

Now, however, is highly unlikely we'll see ESL take another U-Turn regarding Zanzoul.

That's all for now. Stay tuned to esports.gg for more CS2 news.