Hey guys, my name is Rahul Reddy, I am 17 years old and from Virginia, and I wanted to respond to a post where I was accused of cheating at the Last Chance Event at Nationals.
Unfortunately… yes, it is true. I did cheat at the LCE.
I had always been an honest, fair player. It was at Nationals that I began hanging out with some new friends, including Gino Lombardi, and he began showing me how easy it was to cheat. For some reason, I looked up to Gino, and wanting to make friends, was happy to let him teach me his tricks. Besides using hand signals and intimidating his opponents into conceding, one trick Gino showed me in particular involved pulling a card out of my discard pile ("palming" it) after distracting an opponent. At the Last Chance Event, with a Worlds invitation on the line, and Gino pressuring me to get my invite "under any circumstances," I experienced a moment of weakness and succumbed to pressure by trying to palm a card from my discard pile. I was caught by the judge and disqualified.
I take full blame for what I did. I don't blame Gino. I was foolish and naive to believe Gino was cool or this kind of behavior was acceptable in our game. When I tried to pull that card out of my discard pile, I didn't realize how damaging to the game it actually was. Looking now at how many great people there are in the community, it's obvious to me this kind of mentality and behavior have no place in Pokémon.
After everything that happened, reading Mees's posts, and all the drama, I had an epiphany. Gino isn't cool. He isn't a role model. He's an arrogant thug that thinks he is above the rules. There's no doubt in my mind he took Mees's computer. I watched him swipe a bottle of water from one of the restaurants at the food court in Vancouver, then boast about it.
I screwed up. I made a bad choice and I sincerely regret it. Whatever the consequences of my poor choice, I'll face them. I just hope the community isn't above giving second chances, because I truly learned my lesson.