Bungie‘s lawsuit against the Ring-1 cheat seller got a big update, with new names, payment-platform claims, and a 104 Bitcoin cache, plus new details on how the cheat ring allegedly runs.
If you’ve played Destiny 2 for any stretch of time, you’ve probably run into cheaters: aimbots, god mode, damage exploits, and players flying around the map, spamming rocket launchers. Bungie has spent years trying to keep that stuff out, including rolling out BattlEye in September 2021, as well as banning a ton of cheaters in the Day-1 Desert Perpetual raid race.
That push extended beyond the game. Over the last couple of years, Bungie has taken major Destiny 2 cheat sellers to court. In August 2023, it filed a lawsuit targeting the Ring-1 cheat seller, accusing a coordinated network of developers, resellers, and support staff of distributing cheats that undermine the experience for everyone else. The complaint even opened with a warning: “The days of Destiny 2 cheaters being free to engage in a wholesale assault on the Destiny 2 game and its community without fear of consequences are over.”
Fast-forward to this week, on August 14, 2025, and there’s a big update. Bungie has moved to file a Second Amended Complaint (seen by The Game Post) in the case, bringing the timeline past the two-year mark from the original filing on August 1, 2023. This new complaint adds real names where there were aliases before, expands on how the business allegedly runs, and, notably, claims the enterprise is still sitting on a large cryptocurrency reserve.
Bungie Unmasks New Defendants in Destiny 2 Ring-1 Lawsuit
The Second Amended Complaint’s headline change is the unmasking of more people and entities Bungie says are part of the Ring-1 pipeline. These names include Robert S. Herrity (known online as Palace/ModdingPalace/Rob), David Bonar Marpaung (VincentPrice), Sabeen Rehman Soomro (Esswan), and Taylor Knetter. (Five-Star)
Bungie also adds Shoppy Ecommerce Ltd, better known as Shoppy.gg, as a platform that allegedly facilitated these sales, and identifies Finn Alexander Grimpe (also known as “finndev”) as the person behind that platform.
“After three rounds of third-party discovery, in concert with Bungie’s persistent (and ongoing) investigation, Bungie has unmasked 17 people, including several parties with whom Bungie is discussing potential settlement,” the complaint reads. “Additionally, Bungie has identified 19 pseudonymous individuals within the Enterprise.”
The Ring-1 Defendants
The complaint alleges that Ring-1 wasn’t just a handful of coders; it’s an enterprise that “consists of dozens of individuals and entities who coordinate their efforts in furtherance of the common purpose of developing, marketing, distributing, and supporting the Ring-1 Cheat,” and those members fall into four buckets: Developer Defendants, Operator Defendants, Reseller Defendants, and Facilitator Defendants.
At the core, the Developer Defendants “write the software which is packaged, promoted, and sold as the Ring-1 Cheat,” and (critically) are alleged to “collect and distribute the revenue realized from
sales of the Ring-1 Cheat which are transacted in cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin.”
The complaint identifies a leader, “Developer Defendant John Doe No. 31… the kingpin of the Ring-1 Enterprise,” who “manages the revenue received via cryptocurrency sales of the Ring-1 Cheat through the use of a technology known as Bitcoin Lightning.”
Bungie explains Lightning as the way small subscription purchases get batched off-chain before being “cashed out” to a receiving wallet. From there, Doe 31 allegedly takes “anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of the revenue to his own custodial wallet at a cryptocurrency exchange, converting the funds to Euros, and withdrawing them to a standard bank account,” with the remaining funds routed to distribution wallets for other developers.
The filing says transactions are “frequently structured in many small transactions” and split among multiple custodial wallets to obscure “the nature… source… [and] control of the funds,” and claims Doe 31 maintains control of both receiving and distribution wallets. “John Doe No. 31 maintains actual or constructive control not only of all the receiving wallets used by the Enterprise, but of all of the distribution wallets as well.”
Operator Defendants, meanwhile, are described as the people who make Ring-1 run like a product business: they market, sell, provide pre- and post-sale support across forums/Telegram, and, importantly, manage payments and a reseller network.
The complaint points to a payment layer called PayDash, “run by Operator Defendant Joshua Fisher,” which “acts as a shim between legitimate payment services, such as Stripe and ApplePay, and the murky world of game cheats,” with buyers even prompted to acknowledge they’re “not actually purchasing from Ring-1… but rather from Paydash itself.” Bungie alleges Ring-1 uses PayDash to keep access to mainstream processors “from cancellation due to the illegal nature of the Ring-1 Enterprise’s business.”
The Reseller Defendants, “the most numerous,” are the ones who are “usually compensated very poorly for their high levels of legal risk and exposure,” often recruited from the customer base. Bungie alleges some resellers use fraudulent cards for expenses, and some go to unusual lengths to hide, “in one memorable case,” the filing says, a participant “fake[d] their own death” after learning about the lawsuit. The network, Bungie claims, stretches across “at least five continents” and “more than sixty different countries.”
Finally, the Facilitator Defendants. Here, the complaint zooms in on three distinct roles. First, “John Doe No. 28 a/k/a Banek192 a/k/a Ivan M. Sergeevich” is labeled the “reseller of last resort,” a private middleman buyers are sent to when other payment routes fail.
Second, Bungie alleges “Facilitator Defendant Finn Alexander Grimpe,” a long-time figure in hacking circles, as founder/administrator of Shoppy Ecommerce Ltd. (Shoppy.gg). The complaint states: “Shoppy is an e-commerce platform used by many sellers of cheat software… and of other unlawful digital goods,” and notes Bungie’s investigation found GitHub user “finndev” as “sole contributor” to Shoppy’s software before the repo was deleted.
“Grimpe is the founder and, on information and belief, current administrator of Facilitator Defendant Shoppy Ecommerce Ltd. a/k/a Shoppy.gg (‘Shoppy’),” the complaint reads. There’s also a more granular look at infrastructure and platforms. Shoppy.gg is presented as a repeat venue for selling cheats and taking payments, with Bungie alleging that the service lacked meaningful transparency or a functioning DMCA agent while hosting stores that offered circumvention tools.
Third, “John Doe No. 40 a/k/a Maksimka Nikitin” is described as a “broker and provisioner of stolen user accounts,” with Bungie alleging his email and details appear across “dozens of Steam accounts associated with the Ring-1 Enterprise’s cheat development and testing history.” According to the complaint, “Nikitin acquires stolen Steam accounts in bulk and distributes them to other Enterprise members for use in the essential activity of developing and testing the software.”
The money detail that will raise the most eyebrows is a number tucked into the update: according to the complaint, “more than 104 Bitcoin remains present within the Ring-1 Enterprise,” which the filing says was valued at over €10,000,000 (around $12 million) at the time it was drafted. Bungie’s point is that not all revenue was immediately pushed out to individuals; at least some of it sat in accounts linked to the operation.
“Not all of the Ring-1 Enterprise revenue is immediately distributed and withdrawn. As of the drafting of this complaint, for example, more than 104 Bitcoin remains present within the Ring-1 Enterprise. At contemporaneous exchange rates, this Bitcoin alone represents more than € 10,000,000.”
What charges Bungie is pressing
Bungie accuses the defendants of copyright infringement, violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention rules, breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, breaching Bungie’s Limited Software License Agreement, and intentionally interfering with players’ contracts. The company also pleads civil conspiracy and, crucially, civil RICO.
On top of that, Bungie is alleging civil conspiracy and bringing a civil RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) claim, arguing that Ring-1 operates as a coordinated, ongoing criminal enterprise with assigned roles, profit sharing, and deliberate steps to evade detection.
Bungie is asking the court for permanent injunctions to stop the defendants from developing, selling, or distributing the Ring-1 cheat for any of the Bungie titles, as well as an order for the seizure and destruction of all copies of the Destiny 2 cheat software.
“As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ actions, Bungie suffered damage in an amount to be proven at trial, including but not limited to a loss of goodwill among users of Plaintiff’s game, diversion of Plaintiff’s resources to attempt to detect and prevent the use of the Cheating Software, and decreased profits.”
What do you think about this? Have you encountered any cheaters in Destiny 2? Let us know in the comments below!
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