VGV Holding Ltd, , the company behind sweepstakes casinos like Chumba Casino and Sweepstakes Casino, has been hit with a class action suit from Connecticut residents who claim they were defrauded.
The class action comes just a month after state regulators ordered the operator to shut down operations in the state.
According to a report from Law360, a lawsuit filed in the Connecticut state court on Wednesday claimed: “VGW’s audited financials shows VGW spent hundreds of millions of dollars advertising VGW’s platforms and, in such advertisements, deceptively advertise their own legality and thus VGW has defrauded and manipulated the plaintiff into engaging in illegal gambling and losing money.”
For example, lead plaintiff Stephanie Cox claimed she spent $300 because VGW sites engaged in practices banned by legal casinos. The suit expressly referred to the fact that players can get coins that are eligible to be exchanged for cash, but strict limits on this, such as only allowing one request a day, long approval requests for withdrawals and requiring a high exchange threshold, made it impossible for players to benefit.
Sweepstakes are a hot topic of debate in the United States at the moment. A five-part education series run by members of the Indian Gaming Association highlighted how the industry is adapting to these new operators. American Gaming Association Senior Vice President for Government Relations Chris Cylke said the legal status of sweepstakes was “murky” in one of these educational videos on Wednesday.
