Fortnite cheater wins $6,850 in competitive tournaments, gets caught, now owes Epic $175,000

Despite what we are told as children, cheaters do sometimes prosper—fairly often, in fact. Every now and then, though, cheaters push their luck a little too far and their bad deeds come around to bite them in the ass. Such is the case of Sebastian Araujo, who won more than $6,800 in Fortnite tournaments after evading a ban, and now owes Epic $175,000 as a result.

The ruling, provided to PC Gamer by Epic, says Araujo was banned from Fortnite on June 6, 2024, after he was busted using a direct memory access device in a Fortnite tournament in order to get around anti-cheat measures. Instead of mending his ways and returning to the light, however, Araujo created at least three "fake accounts" between June and October 2024, and used a hardware spoofer in order to keep playing.

Over that four-month stretch, Araujo took part in at least 18 Fortnite tournaments, winning $6,850—not big-league cash by any stretch, but a hell of a lot more money than I've ever made playing videogames. Unfortunately for Araujo, he also racked up 991 complaints of cheating during that same stretch, and Epic was paying attention.

Epic filed a lawsuit against Araujo in December 2024, and this week the ruling came down: The defendant apparently ignored the whole thing and so Epic scored a default judgment of $168,550 for DMCA and Copyright Act violations, and another $6,971 in attorneys' fees. It wasn't a total win, as Epic's request for another $100,000 in statutory damages for copyright infringement was found to be excessive.

The one upside for Araujo is that he's managed to avoid the public humiliation suffered by fellow Fortnite tourney cheater Morgan 'RepulseGod' Bamford, who in February was forced to turn over his ill-gotten gains, make a public apology for his bad behavior, and promise to never, ever do it again.

The downside, of course, is that he's on the hook for 175 large. Whether humiliation or destitution is your thing, though, the message is the same: Epic takes this sort of thing seriously, and it will come after you.

As for what Epic needs with $175K, which for the rest of us is essentially the equivalent of finding a nickel under the floor mat of your car, the simple answer is that it doesn't: The damages will be donated to Child's Play, a charity that donates toys and games to children's hospitals around the world.