The 2018-19 Belgian First Division B ran from August to April under the long shadow of the 2017-19 Belgian football fraud scandal, an investigation that eventually swept up players, agents, and clubs across the country. Mechelen were among the named clubs. The accusation was specifically that they had bribed Waasland-Beveren to lose a relegation match in the previous Pro League season, which would have kept Mechelen up. Mechelen won that match 2-0, but still went down on the final day, and the alleged corruption stood. Throughout 2018-19, while Mechelen were winning the opening tournament and chasing the title, nobody knew what the verdict would be.

Going into the promotion playoff, Mechelen had won the opening tournament on 9 November 2018. They needed only a win on the final day of the closing tournament to seal automatic promotion. They drew at Lommel instead, and Beerschot pinched the closing-period title. The first leg of the playoff finished goalless. Goalkeeper Michael Verrips kept Mechelen alive with two big first-half saves. In the second leg, Beerschot were down to ten after 32 minutes following a brutal tackle from Marius Noubissi. Nikola Storm put Mechelen ahead just after halftime. Beerschot equalised from the spot, started thinking about away-goals promotion, and then Tainmont swung his leg. Mechelen were going up. Beerschot had lost a second consecutive promotion playoff.

On 16 March 2019, when Tainmont's volley settled in the Beerschot net, Mechelen celebrated as champions of the Belgian First Division B. By the end of May, the Belgian football federation had found them guilty of the previous season's match-fixing and stripped the promotion. Beerschot, again, were going up instead. Mechelen appealed to the Belgian Arbitration Court for Sports. In July, the court confirmed the guilty verdict but added a twist of its own: under federation rules, Mechelen could not actually be punished for an offence committed more than a year earlier. So they kept the promotion. Beerschot were sent back to the second division. Tainmont's volley stood.

While Mechelen's drama played out at the top of the table, a quieter and crueller story unfolded at the bottom. Lierse SK, founded 1906, four-time Belgian champions, went bankrupt midway through the season and were dissolved. Tubize, the team that had finished last in the relegation playoffs and should have gone down, was saved by Lierse's collapse. In the same Antwerp-province city, a successor club called Lierse Kempenzonen had already moved in. The original Lierse was gone. The First Division B of 2018-19 took the title scandal and the disappearance of a 113-year-old club, and folded both into a single, ordinary season.