Baltimore Sweepstakes Lawsuit: Chumba, Stake.us, Pulsz Sued

The City of Baltimore is suing the six sweepstakes operator groups behind Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots, McLuck, Pulsz, Stake.us, High 5 Casino and Fortune Wins, asking a court to bar them from taking money from Baltimore residents and to order restitution to players.

Baltimore filed on March 4, 2026 and announced it the same day, which drew a round of trade and local coverage and then near silence: the case moved to federal court in April and has sat there since with almost nothing written about where it actually stands. We pulled the amended complaint and the docket ourselves on August 4. If you play in Maryland, this is the most serious action anyone has taken against these brands in your state, and most of them are still open to you while it runs.

Which sweepstakes casino brands is Baltimore suing?

Six operator groups, named in the First Amended Complaint that the Baltimore City Law Department e-filed on April 8, 2026:

Two of those rows need a note. The caption names the High 5 defendants "d/b/a High 5 Games", which is the content studio rather than the sweepstakes brand, but the complaint's own exhibit of dual-currency platforms shows the High 5 Casino product and its "Gold Coins" and "Sweeps Coins". And Fortune Coins was renamed Fortune Wins on April 7, 2026, the day before this complaint was filed.

The plaintiff is the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, brought by City Solicitor Ebony Thompson, with DiCello Levitt LLP as outside counsel. A jury trial is demanded.

What is Baltimore actually claiming?

One claim, not a stack of them: unfair, abusive and deceptive trade practices under the Baltimore City Consumer Protection Ordinance, Baltimore City Code Art. 2, §§ 4-1 et seq., which the complaint says tracks the definitions in the Maryland Consumer Protection Act.

The theory is that the dual-currency model is gambling wearing a costume. The complaint puts it bluntly: users buy Gold Coins and "simultaneously receive a second currency called 'sweeps coins' as a purported 'bonus'," then bet those coins for cash, and that is "consideration (payment), chance (random game outcomes), and prize (cash redemption)."

That three-part test is the same one the industry uses to argue the opposite way, on the basis that a free entry route removes the consideration leg. How the sweepstakes model is meant to stay legal sets out both readings.

Baltimore also alleges the platforms are packaged in "colorful, cartoonish packaging" borrowed from children's mobile games and promoted through influencers on TikTok and YouTube. Every one of those characterisations is an allegation by the City. No defendant has filed an answer, and we found no operator response on the docket.

Why does this matter if you live in Maryland?

Because of what the City is asking for. The request for relief seeks the maximum statutory penalty for each violation, an injunction "mandating that Defendants cease operating their illegal gambling platforms in the City of Baltimore and prohibiting them from accepting transactions from Baltimore residents," disgorgement of gains, and restitution to Baltimore consumers.

An injunction in those terms would close accounts, not just stop advertising. Restitution, if it ever lands, would be money back to players - but nothing in this filing gets there quickly, and a case this early should not change what you do with a balance this month.

The complaint also quotes a letter it attributes to Michael Eaton, Managing Director of Gaming at the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency, sent to Chumba Casino in November 2025: "These offerings contain the elements of gaming: consideration, chance, and prize... Under Maryland law, gaming is illegal unless it is expressly authorized... The gaming that is being offered through your site is not legally authorized in Maryland." The complaint cites that letter through a trade-press report rather than attaching it, and neither is published in full, so the exact wording is a rendering rather than a document we have read.

The letter itself is not in doubt, though, and it is not a one-off. It is the second of two cease-and-desist orders from the same agency. Eaton signed the first on March 12, 2025, telling VGW that Chumba Casino and LuckyLand Slots were "offering and conducting online gaming activities in Maryland without legal authority," demanding any legal opinion the company relied on, and giving it ten days to stop. The second went to both brands on November 18, 2025, after the first was not complied with. Both were obtained and reported by outlets we have not been able to get behind to the documents themselves.

Regulators reaching for enforcement tools short of a ban is the pattern of this year rather than the exception: Iowa spent 2026 handing its gaming commission cease-and-desist power over "illegal sweepstakes" without prohibiting the model outright.

Is this why so many brands block Maryland?

On the evidence, no. That was our first instinct, and the numbers do not support it.

The block is not uniform, and that is the part worth knowing. We read six operators' rules directly on August 4: High 5 Casino names Maryland among 21 states shut out of its sweepstakes platform, and PlayFame and Spree both block it too, while Fortune Wins does not exclude Maryland at all, despite being the renamed Fortune Coins named in this complaint. Against the exclusion lists we hold for all 33 brands we test, 17 block Maryland, including defendants McLuck, Stake.us and Pulsz, whose own help centre names Maryland among the states it cannot serve. Chumba Casino and LuckyLand Slots do not.

So two of the six defendant groups were still taking Maryland registrations as this case was filed, and they are the two VGW brands at the head of the caption. A lawsuit the defendants are mostly ignoring cannot be what drove other companies out, and the brands that do block Maryland include plenty that are not defendants at all.

Maryland has no statute banning dual-currency sweeps, and it sits in the group of states we mapped in our read of the operators' restricted lists, where the block comes from legal risk rather than a ban. The likelier driver is the wider Maryland picture: two cease-and-desist orders from the state gaming regulator, and two ban bills that cleared the House in 2026.

The odd part is who those orders went to. Chumba and LuckyLand received both of them and still take Maryland registrations. The 17 brands that do block the state are, on everything we can see, blocking it without having been ordered to. Our Maryland state page calls those blocks voluntary caution, and in that narrow sense the description holds. What did not hold was the classification around it: the page and our state matrix both filed Maryland as an open market with no regulator action, which after two cease-and-desist orders was not defensible. On August 5 we reclassified Maryland as restricted and rewrote the page's verdict to carry the two orders. The state page also ranks the brands that do still accept Maryland registrations, and our full tested rankings show where each of them sits against the rest of the market.

Where does the case stand now?

In a fight about which courthouse hears it. PTT LLC and High 5 Entertainment removed the case from the Circuit Court for Baltimore City to the US District Court for the District of Maryland on April 23, 2026, docket 1:26-cv-01591 before Judge Brendan Abell Hurson. Baltimore moved to send it back on May 21.

The public docket shows the remand motion entered as docket entry 17 on May 21 and no ruling on it. There is still no answer from any defendant, and the reason is now on the record rather than a matter of inference: the waivers of service returned on June 23 put the answer deadline for two of the defendant groups at September 10, 2026, so nothing is overdue. We read the docket through CourtListener's RECAP mirror, which can lag the court's own PACER record and which fills in behind us - three entries dated June 23 appeared there only after we first published - so there may be entries we cannot see. Nothing has been decided against any defendant.

Sources & documents

• City of Baltimore v. VGW Malta Ltd et al., First Amended Complaint (PDF)
• Federal docket, D. Md. 1:26-cv-01591
• McLuck restricted-state notice
• High 5 Casino sweepstakes rules
• Fortune Wins sweeps rules
• PlayFame restricted-state notice
• Spree terms of service
• Punt sweeps rules
• Chanced sweeps rules
• DiCello Levitt, announcement of the City of Baltimore filing, March 4, 2026
• CasinoBeats, Baltimore sues sweepstakes casino giants, March 5, 2026
• Forbes, Maryland orders VGW to exit and produce a legal opinion, March 17, 2025
• Covers, Maryland regulator sends a second cease-and-desist to the VGW sweepstakes casinos, November 20, 2025

The amended complaint and the docket were retrieved from CourtListener's public RECAP archive on August 4, 2026. The March 4, 2026 filing date and the two Maryland cease-and-desist orders come from the reporting linked above, checked the same day; neither cease-and-desist letter is published in full by the agency. Six operators' rules were read the same day - High 5 Casino, Fortune Wins, PlayFame, Spree, Punt and Chanced; the remaining state-exclusion figures come from our own brand database rather than a fresh read of each operator's terms. Every characterisation of the defendants' conduct in this article is an allegation made by the City of Baltimore and has not been tested in court. We sought a response on the docket and found none; no defendant has yet filed an answer.

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