Law firms Suing Sportzino and Zula Sweepstakes Casinos: Company Responds: Stake.US Now Under Fire

Gambling911.com recently reported on a legal dispute between one or more law firms and the Sportzino sweepstakes gambling site.

Sportzino reached out to Gambling911.com to offer their side of the story while in attendance at the Next.io Social Casino Summit this month.

The Sportzino representative insisted that the cases have no merit.  Indeed, upon further review by Gambling911.com, these actions all seem a bit convoluted and are now sprouting up throughout the sweepstakes casino space.

Sportzino, we suspect, will hardly be the only company impacted. In fact, they are most certainly not alone.

These legal actions typically allege that the sweepstakes casino model operates as an illegal gambling enterprises.  Plaintiffs seek to recover losses incurred while participating in said games, all of which claim to initially be free-to-play but the model relies on future real money purchases overall.

Aside from Sportzino, which is adamant they operate legally, VGW Holdings Limited, the operator behind Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots, and Global Poker, has been among the primary target of these class action suits in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Florida.

Even a casual reader of the Gambling911.com website may be familiar with these types of suits with commercials commonly soliciting individuals for class action matters lodged against such entities as Roundup fertilizer and Camp Lejeune, the latter of which is not technically a class action matter.

In the case of Roundup, numerous class action lawsuits and individual lawsuits have been filed against parent company Bayer alleging the herbicide's active ingredient, glyphosate, caused cancer, particularly non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, in those exposed to it.  

We have no way of verifying whether true or not, however, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, as "probably carcinogenic to humans" in 2015 while other regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have concluded that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic at the levels of exposure typically encountered by humans.

The Camp LeJeune solicitations go something like this: 

"Were you aware that, spanning several decades, families were unwittingly using contaminated water for drinking and bathing at Camp Lejeune? Between 1953 and 1987, more than one million individuals living or working at U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina were subjected to water contamination, ultimately leading to fatalities, illnesses, and life-changing health challenges."

The Camp LeJeune matter is not a class action but involves what is called the Camp Lejeune Justice Act (CLJA) of 2022.

On August 10, 2022, then US President Joe Biden signed into law the Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022.

Section 804 of this law is the Camp Lejeune Justice Act (CLJA) of 2022, which allows people — including Veterans — previously exposed to contaminated water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to file a new claim with the Department of the Navy. The filing deadline has since passed.

Getting back to the sweepstakes casino sector, we learned this past week that Apple and Google are now targets of a federal lawsuit.

From iGaming Business:

Mere days after the plaintiffs in a New Jersey lawsuit dropped their case against four sweeps sites as well as Google and Apple, those plaintiffs (along with one additional party) launched a federal class action suit along the same lines against the same tech giants.

Notably, however, none of the sweepstakes operators were named as defendants this time. So… a fraction of that glimmer of good news remains?

The new suit, filed Friday in United States District Court in New Jersey, pits plaintiffs Julian Bargo of New Jersey and Lamar Prater of New York (both involved in the previous suit) as well as Rebecca Platt of New York against Apple Inc, Apple Payments Inc, Google LLC and Google Payment Corp. It seeks “to recover money lost to illegal gambling, for injunctive relief and for other appropriate relief, from an illegal interstate gambling enterprise facilitated by the defendants and in which they materially participate.”

And later in the week we learned that Stake.US is the subject of a suit out of California.

The complaint, filed by Dennis Boyle, claims the platform violates state law by offering casino-style games to California residents.

From Next.io:

Stake.us is the US brand of global cryptocurrency giant Stake.com, which is widely recognised as one of the world’s largest private online gambling companies by revenue.

Stake.us’s business model is the main issue in the case, which, as a sweepstake-based site, uses a “Gold Coins” and “Stake Cash” system that the plaintiff alleges is essentially real-money gambling.

According to the complaint, users can purchase Gold Coins and receive Stake Cash, which can be redeemed for prizes including gift cards and cryptocurrency.

Boyle, who claims to struggle with gambling addiction, also argues that the website specifically targets California residents.

Sportzino was unable to offer much comment to Gambling911 in regard to the ongoing lawsuits other than that their business is fully legal and compliant, they operate a reputable website, and they intend to defend each of these suits.