A friend of mine just recently bought a used PC off e-bay, because he was playing CS:GO on a 4 year old laptop with me for about a year. I was able to convince him to install VALORANT, which he only played one time with me because his old laptop just couldnt hnadle it.

He logged into his RIOT-Account and after a moment while we were waiting in a lobby for some friends a notification popped up, that he was banned for cheating (which he most cetainly did not because on his account he only played the one game so far, which was around half a year ago).

As far as I understand VALORANT bans are so called "hardware-bans" in which the PC-components, especially the motherboard are banned from starting any games and ban every account that tries to log in on the PC (correct me if that is wrong). We assume that the previous owner probably cheated on that PC or some parts of it and got banned before selling it (maybe he even sold it BECAUSE of the ban, the offer was quite good).

He already contacted the riot-support team, but they seem unresponsive and will not negotiate or consider looking deeper into that matter, since "all bans are final".

In the case of my friend its not a big deal, besides that he will not be able to play VALORANT with us, since he had no skins or time invested on his account, but someone who spent some time and money on their account might lose it all. Keep that in mind when considering buying a used PC off e-bay for example.