Don't think he did anything remotely close to criminal. For a person being on the rules committee for a handicapping contest, and advocating for rules against collusion amongst them being one of them, kind of lost all credibility.
As to being on site, how do you guard against collusion virtually ?
And it was an in person contest. He apologized , absolutely right thing to do, as for punishment and if one should be given , is above my pay grade. If it wasn't him, anyone else would have probably skated. So a lot wrong here, and this episode exposed it. Both the player and the tournament should learn from this and move forward.