Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed two lawsuits in Hillsborough County Circuit Court on 19 August against major online sweepstakes casino operators and the payment firms that help process their transactions. The state is seeking permanent injunctions to bar the businesses from operating or soliciting in Florida, along with restitution, disgorgement, civil penalties, attorneys’ fees and recovery of consumer losses.
As covered in July, a Minnesota judge rejected Stake.us’s bid to send a separate proposed class action to arbitration. This week’s Florida filing puts the broader sweepstakes model under another legal attack, this time from the state’s top law-enforcement office.
One complaint targets Stake and related entities, including Sweepsteaks Ltd, Easygo, Medium Rare and Kick Streaming, as well as co-founders Bijan Tehrani and Ed Craven. The other targets VGW and its brands Chumba Casino, LuckyLand and Global Poker, along with payment companies named in the filings, including Yodlee, Trustly, Worldpay, Praxis and Breeze Labs Payments.
The attorney general says the businesses use a dual-currency system designed to disguise real-money gambling. According to the state, players buy packages of “Gold Coins” bundled with “Stake Cash” or “Sweeps Coins”, then use the credits to play slots, blackjack, roulette and poker. The complaint says the credits can later be redeemed for cryptocurrency, gift cards or cash after minimal play-through requirements, while the platforms market themselves as free, safe and legal social entertainment.
The filings accuse the operators of violating Florida’s gambling laws and the state’s deceptive-trade-practices statute. The complaint argues that Florida law generally bars gambling except in limited circumstances, and it points to the narrow slot-machine regime created after the 2004 constitutional amendment and the 2005 law that authorised slot machines only in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
The state also says the platforms targeted Florida residents directly, including by advertising to people they knew lived in the state and allowing users to verify their identities with Florida-issued photo IDs and proof of residence. The complaint says the defendants accepted credit cards and Apple Pay, used influencers, and kept Floridians gambling online without warning them that the business model was illegal.
Next.io reported that the state is seeking to recover 100% of users’ losses, and that the penalties sought could reach $10,000 for each wilful violation or $15,000 if a violation involves a disabled customer or someone over 60. Florida’s Voice separately reported that state officials allege the platforms generated hundreds of millions of dollars from Florida residents.
