Attorney Madeline Pendley said the mental health impacts of underage gambling include depression, anxiety, substance abuse and suicide.
A Florida law firm has joined the legal team representing a New York State resident whose lawsuit alleges he was enticed as a minor into an illegal online gambling network that has ushered in a new addiction crisis on the scale of the opioid epidemic.
Working with law firms in California and New York, the Pensacola-based firm of Rafferty, Domnick, Cunningham & Yaffa (RDCY) filed the lawsuit last month on behalf of a plaintiff identified only as John Doe. The complaint alleges that Doe, while a minor, was sucked into underage gambling livestreams and cryptocurrency exchanges via the offshore gambling platform Stake.com.
The lawsuit alleges violations of state laws protecting minors by a constellation of defendants, including Stake.com, Sweepstakes LTD, Easygo Group Holdings and a Florida resident, Christopher Freeman. Freeman is alleged to be involved in the operation of a predecessor to Stake.com called Primedice but was eventually elbowed out of the business due to a dispute with partners.
“The predictable result of (the) defendants’ operation was a devastating impact on (the) plaintiff, including years of financial losses and a severe addiction-related injury, all incurred before (he) was legally allowed to gamble,” the lawsuit, which was filed with the New York Supreme Court, states.
Doe started gambling at the age of 13 after seeing promotions about the games through livestreaming platforms and influencers on social media, the RDCY firm said in a news release.
“These promotions, the lawsuit alleges, normalized high-risk gambling behavior and provided instructions on how to bypass geographic restrictions designed to block U.S. users,” the law firm reported.
The RDCY firm, which has experience in representing individuals against institutions with substantial resources, got involved with the case at the request of California-based Schenk Law, according to RDCY attorney Madeline Pendley. In turn, RDCY recruited a New York firm with a history of handling mass tort cases.
“This is consistent with how mass tort litigation works nationally; firms from all over the country collaborate on cases to build the best team possible, and file wherever jurisdiction is proper,” Pendley told Legal Newsline in an email.
Stake.com drew in minors through influencers, including streamer Adin Ross and rapper Drake, Pendley said.
“Any minor with a basic VPN (virtual private network) could access the platform, and the company's age verification was, at best, performative,” she said. “The aggressive marketing into youth spaces and the near-total absence of meaningful safeguards was intentional.”
About 50% of 16-year-olds reported taking part in gambling activities during the past year, according to Common Sense Media. And adolescents have a problem-gambling rate two to four times that of adults, Pendley reported.
“By the time a teenager has stolen a parent's credit card and lost thousands of dollars, the shame and hopelessness of their financial situation can feel completely insurmountable,” she said. “That sense of having no way out is too much for many young people, and they reach a breaking point.”
Measures to restrict underage gambling are already largely in place in the United States, but the most unaddressed issue involves marketing to youths, according to Pendley.
“The most meaningful changes that need to be made are restrictions on gambling-related content and sponsorships that will foreseeably be viewed by adolescents,” she said.
LinkedIn reports that five similar lawsuits around the nation – from California to South Carolina – were filed against Stake.com last year.
The New York lawsuit seeks unspecified economic, non-economic and punitive damages, as well as an injunction to stop Stake.com and other defendants from accepting wagers from New York residents unless effective age- and identity-verification measures are put in place.
