Florida Stake.us, VGW Lawsuits: Case Numbers, Nobody Served

Florida's two sweepstakes lawsuits now have case numbers - 26-CA-009028 against Stake.us and 26-CA-009016 against VGW, the operator of Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots and Global Poker - and the Hillsborough County clerk's own records show neither case carrying a single return of service as of August 23. Until a defendant is served, no response is due from anybody, and nothing in either case touches your account.

We pulled this from the clerk's public-records server rather than from a write-up. Hillsborough County publishes daily civil filing extracts and a weekly return-of-service extract as plain CSV files, and both carry these two cases. Because the suits were filed in state court, they do not appear on the federal court mirrors most people search, so the clerk's own data is the only public route to their current status.

What are the Florida case numbers?

Both were filed on August 19, 2026, and we covered the complaints themselves and what they ask for the same day. The clerk logged them under different case types despite the two being filed minutes apart, which is a clerical classification rather than a legal one.

The VGW case names seven VGW entities alongside Yodlee, Trustly and Worldpay Holdco. It is not the only live case against that group: VGW is also defending two Minnesota class actions in federal court. The Stake case names Sweepsteaks Ltd, Easygo Group Holdings, Medium Rare N.V., Kick Streaming, Praxis Tech, Breeze Labs Payments, and two individuals, Bijan Tehrani and Ed Craven. We wrote separately about why Florida named the payment processors, which is the part of these filings with reach past Florida.

Where are the Stake.us defendants based?

This is the detail the clerk's index adds. Six of the eight defendant records in the Stake case carry addresses outside the United States:

The VGW case's ten defendants are listed with the address column blank in both extracts, so we cannot do the same breakdown for it. The corporate structures behind both are set out on our Sweepsteaks Limited and VGW operator profiles.

Where a defendant sits changes how it gets served. Section 48.194 of the Florida Statutes covers service on a party in another state, territory or commonwealth of the United States, and provides that it be made in the same manner as service within Florida, with no order of court required. That is the straightforward route, and on this roster it is available for exactly two defendants: Bijan Tehrani in New York and Breeze Labs Payments in Oregon. It does not reach the six defendants outside the United States. Neither complaint says how the state intends to serve those six; both plead personal jurisdiction under section 48.193 of the Florida Statutes and stop there.

Who is running the case for Florida?

Both complaints are signed by Ellen K. Lyons, Special Counsel and Assistant Attorney General in the civil division, under Attorney General James Uthmeier. The clerk's index lists her against the VGW case and records "No Attorney" against the Stake case, which is a gap in the clerk's field rather than a difference between the two suits: the signature blocks on the two as-filed complaints are the same.

Those signature blocks also show the state is not running these alone. Three private firms are listed as attorneys for the Department of Legal Affairs: Baron & Budd, P.C., Bursor & Fisher, P.A., and Harrison Rivard & Duncan, Chtd. of Panama City. Ten of the thirteen private lawyers named are marked "Application For Admission Pro Hac Vice Forthcoming", meaning they had not yet been admitted to appear in these Florida cases on the day the complaints were filed. Only the two Harrison Rivard & Duncan lawyers carry Florida bar numbers. That is a second procedural step, alongside service, that had not happened when the suits were announced.

Has Stake.us or VGW been served yet?

No, on the record available. The clerk's return-of-service extract dated August 23, 2026 carries both cases with every service field empty: no service return date and no return of non-service, on all eight Stake defendant rows and on the single row the extract holds for the VGW case.

That matters because of what a return of service is. Section 48.21 of the Florida Statutes requires each person who effects service of process to note on a return-of-service form "the date and time when it comes to hand, the date and time when it is served, the manner of service, the name of the person on whom it was served." The clerk's dataset carries the date that form comes back. For these two cases, nothing has been entered.

One caveat we think is more useful than the finding. We checked the baseline: 289 separate cases filed in Hillsborough County civil court on August 19 appear in the same extract, and not one of them has a recorded service return either. Nor is the field simply dormant, which is the obvious way this check could mislead: 1,305 rows elsewhere in the same file do carry a service return date, so it is a field the clerk populates. Four working days is early. Read this as the case clock not having started, not as evidence that anything is going wrong for the state.

A second limit worth stating, because it bounds how far the finding goes. The return-of-service extract lists all eight Stake defendants but carries only a single, unnamed row for the VGW case, while the daily filing extract from the same clerk lists all ten VGW defendants by name. The two datasets disagree, so the VGW roster above comes from the filing index, and the service finding can only be read case by case rather than defendant by defendant. Nobody has been served in either case; we cannot say more than that about the ten VGW defendants individually.

What has to happen before either case moves?

Three steps stand between the filings and any deadline a defendant has to meet:

1. Service of process on each defendant. The clerk's August 23 extract records no service return in either case, so no response clock has started for anybody.
2. A route to the six defendants outside the United States. Section 48.194 covers service in another state, not in Cyprus, Australia or Curacao, and neither complaint says how the state intends to reach them.
3. Pro hac vice admission for the outside lawyers. Ten of the thirteen private lawyers in the signature blocks were marked "Forthcoming" on the complaints as filed on August 19.

Only the first of those puts anyone on a clock, and it has not happened.

What does this mean for Florida players?

Nothing has changed since we reported that Florida's sweepstakes rules are unchanged. No court has ordered any site to stop taking Florida players, neither complaint asked for an emergency order, and no defendant is yet on a clock to respond. Stake.us, Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots and Global Poker are all still operating. Our state-by-state legality tracker shows where that is not the case, and our explainer on whether sweepstakes casinos are legal sets out the sweepstakes-law argument the operators run against a reading like Florida's.

What we would do in the meantime is what we would say in any state with a live case: do not leave a redeemable balance sitting for months. Our guide to how to redeem Sweeps Coins covers the verification steps that slow a first cash-out down, our sweeps casinos ranked by real redemptions page shows which sites clear a redemption fastest, and our report on what happens to balances when a state ban lands sets out how little notice operators have given elsewhere. That is prudence, not a prediction about these cases.

Sources & documents

• Hillsborough County Clerk, daily civil filing extract for August 19, 2026 - case numbers, case types, full party rosters and defendant addresses
• Hillsborough County Clerk, return of service extract dated August 23, 2026 - service status, and the August 19 baseline cohort
• Florida Statutes section 48.21 - what a return of service must state
• Florida Statutes section 48.194 - personal service in another state, territory or commonwealth of the United States, which covers the two US-based defendants and not the six abroad
• Florida Attorney General, VGW complaint as filed - signature block, outside counsel, and the section 48.193 jurisdiction allegation
• Florida Attorney General, Stake complaint as filed - same signature block on the Stake case
• Florida Attorney General news release, August 19, 2026 - the announcement and both as-filed complaints

Ranked alternatives that are open to Florida players are on our best sweepstakes casinos page.

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