Cheating has been around the Little League World Series for a while now. Just ask the 2001 Mid-Atlantic Region teams who watched Danny Almonte, a pitcher from the Bronx, New York, who was 14 years old but claimed to 12. He ended up pitching every game and basically pitched them to a 3rd place finish in the LLWS. But I have never heard of this latest type of cheating.
What happened was the presidents of Little Leagues all around Illinois stacked the Jackie Robinson West’s Little League All-Star team with the best players in Illinois. They said they were ”extending the leagues boundaries” which is typically totally fine to do, but the problem was they never cleared it with Little League International (the head of Little League.) The presidents probably thought the League would never approve of this, so they just went on ahead and didn’t tell anyone.
Jackie Robinson West went on and won the Great Lakes Regional Championship to go to the LLWS. In the LLWS they beat Washington, lost to Nevada, beat Texas, beat Pennsylvania, beat Nevada in the US Championship, but lost to South Korea in the LLWS Championship. A few months later, Nevada parent Frank LasPaluto, father of 2nd baseman Drew LasPaluto, noticed that the Jackie Robinson West Little League never got their boundary extension approved by Little League International. Everyone kind of forgot about it until February 13th, 2015. The head of Little League was wondering if they should strip the title and wins from the team. They decided to do so.