Canadian rapper Drake, Texas resident and lover of all things Houston, has been named in a class action lawsuit for “deceptive” online gambling practices.
Drake, livestreamer Adin Ross, and Sweepsteaks Limited, the parent company of Stake.us, were sued in a class-action lawsuit in Missouri. The lawsuit alleges online gambling site Stake.us circumvented state gambling laws and accuses Drake and Ross of exploitative marketing for the company.
Justin Killham, the main plaintiff of the lawsuit, says he lost money on the website because of wrongful trade practices and deceptive marketing that labeled the gaming site as a “social casino” that doesn’t allow actual gambling, which the plaintiff says allows the site to skate by state laws that make gambling illegal.
Stake, which billionaires Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani co-founded in 2017, runs two websites: Stake.com, which is an online gambling site, and Stake.us, which is a different website for users in the United States. The U.S. version markets itself as a “social casino” where folks can play “games” with digital currencies. The currencies can be bought with real money and exchanged for real money.
If you have frequented X, you may have noticed in the past year videos and memes with tiny Stake logos on the edges. Many posts on X will even get flagged, revealing them as stealth ads for the gambling site.
Stake is being accused of bypassing gambling laws by using virtual currencies that allow users to wager real money on games, earning bonus “Stake Cash” that can then be exchanged for cryptocurrencies. Essentially, they are using funny money bought with real money to play games with funny money that can then be used to purchase crypto (which is also, in a way, not real money), which can then be sold for real money.
Drake, an official Texas resident since he moved to Brenham in 2023, becomes a major player in all of this when you look at his involvement with the company and his relationship with problematic streamer Ross. Drake has been promoting Stake on his Instagram, which boasts 142 million followers, and has appeared on numerous streams with Ross, who is a major brand ambassador for the “social casino.” Drake has even posted a video showing his balance is $1 million on Stake.
Gambling has been a long-rumored vice of Drake’s, especially on social media, with fans and detractors alike have theorized that his flurry of album releases over the last few years was a way to support his gambling habits.
Like a Canadian Mattress Mack, he has routinely placed enormous bets on sporting events. He famously bet $800,000 on the Indiana Pacers to win the NBA finals last year, losing the bet when the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Pacers, which, as many pointed out, was another instance of the “Drake Curse coming to fruition.” In 2024, he lost another NBA finals wager, losing $500,000 in Bitcoin, betting on the Dallas Mavericks to beat the Boston Celtics.
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This article originally published at Drake has legal trouble over ‘deceptive’ online gambling site.
