Despite winning $350,000 on rival daily fantasy sports site FanDuel on the same weekend that he accidentally published sensitive data to a public forum, DraftKings employee Ethan Haskell has been found to have done nothing wrong in the eyes of the company and independent law firm. Former U.S. Attorney John Pappalardo of the Greeberg Traurig firm led an investigation, initiated by DraftKings, which determined that Haskell could not have used the sensitive material to his benefit because he was not given access to it until that weekend's lineups were already set, according to a statement released by DraftKings and obtained by ESPN.
Haskell, a written content manager for DraftKings, published a "percentage owned" chart on Sept. 27 after the early slate of NFL games had commenced but prior to kickoff for the afternoon group. That same weekend, Haskell took second place in a FanDuel million-dollar NFL contest, winning $350,000.
The investigation concluded that Haskell did not receive the Excel file containing the data, a file he was to use in order to pen a weekly article, until after 3:28 a.m., which was the time at which he submitted a lineup for FanDuel's $25 buy-in, $5 million guaranteed contest.
Per Greenberg Trauigs' findings, Haskell did not receive the file until "40 minutes after the lineup was locked."
While Haskell's name may have been cleared to some extent, the reverberations of this continue to be felt throughout the fantasy sports industry. Already, 11 class action lawsuits have been filed against daily fantasy sites like FanDuel and DraftKings and the legality of the entire daily fantasy sports industry is now being questioned via a federal investigation.
Despite the sudden issues, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins is adamant that his company is fully committed to operating in a way that is "completely transparent and fair" for all of its players.
"We are very pleased that the independent investigation by Greenberg Traurig has confirmed the findings to our internal review of this matter and our conclusion that were no improper use of information by our employee," Robins said in a statement, via ESPN. "In fact, as the investigation also concluded, it was not even possible for non-public information to have been used improperly."
