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Australia’s youngest billionaire Ed Craven has been accused of running one of the largest and most profitable illegal online gambling operations in American history, in a second US lawsuit involving rap megastar Drake, internet personality Adin Ross, and Sydney man George Nguyen.
The class action lawsuit filed by New Jersey-based firm Lomurro Munson last month seeks to stop Stake, Craven’s Australian-founded online cryptocurrency casino that is only accessible overseas, from allegedly preying on customers.
The lawsuit also alleges Stake was used by co-defendants Ross, Nguyen and hip-hop influencer Livingston George Allen (aka DJ Akademiks) to build a “modern-day pyramid scheme” to artificially inflate Drake’s streaming numbers.
It follows a similar lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in January, which alleged that Drake used his celebrity status to induce punters to bet on the Stake platform. That lawsuit did not directly name its Australian co-founder Craven.
There is no suggestion that the claims in the lawsuit are true, only that they have been made in the legal filing.
“This is a desperate cash grab and not a concern,” a spokesperson for Craven’s Australian company Easygo told this masthead. Stake called the January filing a “nonsense claim” and a “grifting lawsuit”. That matter remains ongoing.
The New Jersey lawsuit, filed in the name of lead plaintiff Jason Nufio, alleges that the defendants breached Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations (RICO) laws – originally designed to deal with organised crime – with the plaintiff demanding damages in excess of $US5 million, recovery of his gambling losses, and an injunction stopping Stake from operating in New Jersey.
Because online gambling is banned in most US states, Craven and co-founder Bijan Tehrani are alleged to have marketed Stake as a “social casino” which does not allow real money betting.
Instead, Stake’s American arm allows users to bet with virtual tokens, some of which can be redeemed for cryptocurrency pegged in value to the US dollar, a model that was expressly banned in New Jersey last year.
But according to the lawsuit, those tokens are “a fig leaf to superficially avoid the appearance of illegal gambling and afford Stake a veneer of deniability.” The lawsuit alleges that this model is designed to deceive regulators and generate revenue from vulnerable Americans.
“By masking its real money gambling platform as a free and safe “social casino,” all defendants created a predatorial gambling environment, deliberately misleading consumers and exposing consumers to the risks of gambling addiction and jeopardising the financial well-being of consumers and their families,” the filing says.
The lawsuit claims that Stake pays Drake and Ross to promote the casino and Craven’s controversial online streaming platform Kick. Drake is a high-profile Stake brand ambassador who in 2022 signed a promotional deal with the platform worth $100 million a year. Ross, an online provocateur and close associate of “manosphere” influencer Andrew Tate, has said he has a livestreaming contract with Kick worth $10,000 an hour.
The legal claim alleges that Craven and Tehrani founded Kick “to promote their illegal gambling operation,” in 2022, after rival service Twitch banned streaming from Stake.
Drake and Ross are accused of inducing gamblers to use Stake by streaming themselves betting on the platform. But the lawsuit alleges that the pair bet using money provided to them by Stake, which also rigged games in their favour.
“This deceptive arrangement concealed the fact that Drake and Ross faced no genuine financial risk, while ordinary consumers who followed their lead and placed similar wagers stood to lose real money,” the court documents said.
Nufio, the lead plaintiff, is described in the filing as a Stake account holder who placed bets based on Drake’s promotion of the platform, which made him believe it was a lawful and legitimate gambling platform. The claim provides scant other details about Nufio.
Class actions are big business in the United States. According to legal analytics firm Lex Machina, they increased 25 per cent to 12,284 in 2025, although the overwhelming majority of claims are settled before going to trial.
The lawsuit also alleges that Drake, Ross, Nguyen and Allen have further incentive to promote Stake because it is used by the defendants to covertly finance online “bots” to artificially inflate the rapper’s streaming numbers on platforms like Spotify.
Drake and Ross are accused of using illegal gambling proceeds to pay Allen, Nguyen and online bot vendors to create fake accounts on streaming platforms to continuously play the rapper’s songs. Because artists receive royalties based on their streaming numbers, this amounts to a form of “streaming fraud,” diverting money away from musicians whose songs were listened to by real consumers.
The lawsuit claims that the defendants transferred millions of dollars toward this end using Stake’s online tipping function, described as an “unregulated money transmitter that appears to exist outside the oversight of any financial regulator”.
Stake is accused of contributing to this scheme by providing Drake and Ross with money to gamble without risk of loss, and a platform to move money in an undetected manner, effectively facilitating the alleged streaming fraud, and further incentivising the pair to aggressively promote the site to the detriment of consumers.
Nguyen, the operator of Instagram meme pages “grandwizardchatn---a” and “grandavious” and who has become a close online confidante of Drake despite operating out of the basement of his parents’ Cabramatta residence, is described in the lawsuit as a broker and operational facilitator for the alleged betting schemes.
Drake, Ross, Nguyen and Allen were all contacted for comment.
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