How do you deal with rating droppers?

Afternoon all.

I am directing a tournament for those rated under 1400.  There are some players who have much higher ratings playing.  I know from playing some games in other tournaments that they must have deliberately lost games to drop the rating to the level to enter this tournament.

Is it bad form for me as tournament director to remove them?  (I have been knocked out so there is no conflict of interest now.)

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/players?id=117484

Any advice on keeping the tournament a sporting and honourable one would be most appreciated.

It is very common for people to start a tourney under the rating level and after winning a number of their games, to increase over that. It doesn't take sandbagging to do that, though it is possible that was done. And rating fluctuations also don't mean that. I'm down almost 200 rating points from my highest (and I would say I'm more accurately rated now) and it only had to do with losing games legitimately.

My take is that unless you stated you would remove players if they went over the rating cap (or some value over that) during the tourney, then I think it is a bad idea to do it. Players sign up for toureys with the expectation they will be able to complete them if they do well enough. Changing the terms of the tourney during the event, in my opinion, isn't a good way to do it.

Especially if you if you would like people to participate in futre tourneys you create.

Are you talking about sandbaggers?

You just make a rule, on the next tournament, that the rating cap is effective for their highest rating achieved on chess.com  

It's a stupid rule, and I just wouldn't worry about it.

get rid of them, teach them a lesson

I know quite a people who had high ratings (2000) but who had 700 games running and when they had an emergency or something, they dropped to 1100. You can look at their previous games and try to see what happened.