Following Kanamaru Makoto's exposure at the Fighter's Road 2012 championship, Bushiroad has instituted a new policy to punish cheaters in official games1. Effective July 23rd, 2012 Kanamaru is disqualified from the championship and banned from participating in any official matches for the next eighteen months, until his punishment expires on January 22nd, 2014. This, combined with Kanamaru's prior banning from card shops in his home city of Osaka, will theoretically prevent Kanamaru from cardfighting at all for two years. Official twitter accounts also mention that repeat infringements could lead to harsher penalties being instituted over time, but Bushiroad has stressed the importance of prevention rather than punishment, as this incident of cheating now brings into question the validity of the results of any match in which Kanamaru participated.
Specifically, Kanamaru was found to have marked the sleeved backings of the trigger units in his deck, allowing him to tell when he would drive or damage check a trigger. This method of cheating was already quite popular before he was exposed at the championship, and was an ongoing problem shop judges in Japan had been dealing with over the past year. With the new penal code in place, Bushiroad has a stranglehold on these fraud fighters.
1. "Application History for Penal Regulations and Provisions (Last Updated: 2012/7/24)." Cardfight!! Vanguard JP. Bushiroad, 24 July 2012. Web. 24 July 2012. <cf-vanguard.com/howto/penalty/>.
