Dear WCA Community,

After a couple of years of little WCA activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are finally seeing a gradual return of competitions in most regions around the world! This is exciting, and we hope that things continue to improve so that we can have more competitions and more fun all around the world.

Unfortunately, as competitions are returning, we have also seen an increase in the number of attempts of fraud, cheating and other kinds of misbehavior. The Disciplinary Committee has decided to publish a short and anonymized report for some of the cases that we have investigated this year. We hope that this can give you an insight into the work that the WDC carries out behind the scenes:

1. At a competition earlier this year, three young competitors entered restricted areas of the building where the competition was hosted, despite being told not to by the delegates. Whilst in a room that was meant to be locked, two of them turned the taps on and left them on as they returned to the competition. This was not discovered until a few days later, when the water had already caused significant damage to the building. The competitors were caught and identified thanks to the surveillance cameras. When confronted with the evidence, they confessed, and their parents paid for the damage done to the building. Given the severity of these actions and their consequences, we gave all three competitors a ban for entering restricted areas, and the two of them responsible for the flooding received a longer ban.
2. A person signed up for a competition with a fake name, a fake email address and left offensive remarks in the registration comments. With the help of Sam Spendla from the Results Team we were able to identify this person as a registered speedcuber, and we noticed that it was not the first time they did this. When we confronted this person they immediately confessed and apologized. We gave this competitor a formal warning. We would like to take this chance to remind everyone that using official WCA resources to make fun of delegates and organizers for your own amusement is not acceptable behavior.
3. A competitor claimed that one of the times they obtained was faster than what was entered on WCA live, due to a 1 being mistaken for a 7. To support this claim, they shared an edited picture of the scorecard with the local community. After a detailed investigation we determined that the time had been entered correctly the first time, and that this competitor was trying to deceive us and the delegates in order to obtain a faster time, and in this case a national record result. The competitor was issued a ban.
4. A competitor reported being the victim of what they described as harassment: some personal information was shared by another competitor as a community contribution via official WCA social media. The competitor made it clear that they had no remorse for their actions and admitted to delaying his response in order to avoid being banned before a major competition in their country. In our investigation we have also discovered a pattern of bullying, harassment and mockery against the competitor who reported the case to us. With all of this in mind, after our investigation we decided to issue a ban. We would like to take this chance to remind competitors that we have a zero tolerance stance on bullying and any actions that are taken in a deliberate effort to cause others emotional or physical harm.
5. Ending with a positive note, we have a guilty competitor who redeemed himself. Back in 2014, Carlos Miguel Pérez (2014) defrauded multiple fellow speedcubers by promising to sell them cubes, taking their money and never delivering the cubes. You can read the original public announcement here. After almost 8 years Carlos was able to prove to us that he had contacted the defrauded competitors and returned their money or given them their cubes. As is standard in cases of fraud and theft, bans remain permanent unless the competitor responsible returns all stolen property and/or funds, so in this case we have lifted Carlos’ ban and he is once again able to compete in WCA competitions.

To conclude this Digest, we would like to remind everyone to make sure they fully understand the WCA Regulations and competition procedures. If you have any questions or are unsure about how to do something, please do not hesitate to ask the Delegate(s) of the competition. In addition, if you think the competition results are being compromised in any way or if you see suspicious behavior, find the nearest Delegate immediately and report the incident.

Do you have questions for the WDC? Feel free to send us an email, or ask your question in the Disciplinary section of the WCA forum.

Sebastiano Tronto
WDC Leader
On behalf of the Disciplinary Committee