Stake.us Sues an Illinois Player, Seeks Default Judgment

Stake.us has asked a federal judge in Chicago to turn an arbitration award into a money judgment against an Illinois player. The court held him in default on August 29, 2026 for not answering the suit, and the operator moved for default judgment on September 2. The player filed his first papers a day later, without a lawyer, and a hearing is set for September 10.

Arbitration clauses are sold as the thing that stops you suing the casino. This docket shows the same clause running the other way: the operator finishes the arbitration, wins its costs, and then goes to a federal court to collect them from the customer.

We found it on the docket rather than in any report, which is how we check everything we publish. The case is Sweepsteaks Limited d/b/a Stake.us v. Zawadzki, No. 1:26-cv-06840, in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, before District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly. Our Sweepsteaks Limited operator profile has the corporate detail on the company behind Stake.us.

How did the Stake.us player end up in default?

Stake.us filed the case on June 10, 2026. The defendant, Szymon Zawadzki, is a single named individual who gives an Illinois address in his own filings, and the docket shows the complaint arriving with the Terms of Service, an Interim Award and a Final Award attached as exhibits. The court's own record says what kind of case this is: the docket lists the cause as "09:1 U.S. Arbitration Act" and the nature of suit as "896 Other Statutes: Arbitration," and Judge Kennelly's orders call the filing "plaintiff's complaint/petition." It is an action to enforce an arbitration award, not a fresh dispute. Zawadzki identifies the award as the one issued in AAA consumer case No. 01-24-0006-1550 and puts the petition under 9 U.S.C. sections 9 and 207; the complaint is not in the free public file, so that last detail is his. Then the clock did what clocks do to people who are not represented.

Two things in that sequence are worth separating. Sweepsteaks asked for the default itself, on August 28. The motion for a money judgment four days later was filed on the court's own schedule, because the August 29 order that entered the default also told the operator to file its supporting materials by September 3.

Twenty-four days ran between service and the entry of default. The deadline inside that window was twenty-one days from service, the ordinary federal answer period under Rule 12(a), and it does not stretch because the person served has no lawyer. That is the whole story of how a consumer loses a case he never argued.

The one order in this sequence that is not about deadlines is worth reading in the judge's own words. On September 3 Judge Kennelly wrote that the motion "asks for an award of interest through the date of judgment but in an indeterminate amount. That won't work; a money judgment has to be for an amount certain," and directed Sweepsteaks to file a calculation of interest through September 8. The supplement landed the same day with a post-award interest exhibit attached.

How much money is Stake.us asking for?

Not in the operator's own words. The motion for default judgment, the supporting declarations and the interest exhibit are all on the docket, but none of them is in the free public mirror, so we have not read them.

What is public is the defendant's side. Exactly one document on this docket can be downloaded free, his Exhibit P-1 at entry 20, and in it he reads the plaintiff's September 2 and September 3 declarations as seeking 9% interest and a total of $14,478.09. He also says the Final Award itself awarded no interest and gave him 90 days to pay, which is why the interest is the part the judge stopped on. All of that is his characterisation of documents we could not open, so treat the figures as his and not as confirmed. The scale is the point rather than the precision: this is not a headline verdict, it is roughly the price of a used car, sought from one individual over an arbitration he brought himself and lost.

Why does this matter if you play at a sweepstakes casino?

Because it answers a question we could not answer two days ago. Covering the Massachusetts players' motion to vacate a Stake.us arbitration award on September 2, we told readers to open the dispute-resolution clause in any operator's terms and check what it says about who pays the costs of an arbitration you lose. This docket is what that looks like when it is exercised.

1. An arbitration you lose can produce a bill, and the bill is enforceable in a federal court. The operator does not need your agreement to convert an award into a judgment. It files a petition, serves you, and waits.
2. Service starts a deadline that does not care whether you have a lawyer. Zawadzki was served on August 5 and had until August 26. Missing that put him in default before any judge looked at whether the award was sound.
3. Getting to court first offers no protection. He had already sued Sweepsteaks in the same courthouse, on April 21, 2026, before either award existed; the claims to vacate them went in with an amended complaint on June 3. Sweepsteaks filed the confirmation case a week after that, and it is the later case that got to the brink of judgment first.

None of that is unique to Stake.us. Binding arbitration with a costs provision is standard across the category, which is why our guide to whether sweepstakes casinos are legal treats the terms you accept as mattering as much as the law in your state.

Can the player get the default set aside?

He has asked to, and the court has not ruled. On September 3 Zawadzki entered a pro se appearance and filed an emergency motion to set aside the entry of default under Rule 55(c), to defer entry of default judgment, and for leave to file a responsive pleading. It was docketed on September 4 with several declarations and an exhibit.

In his own earlier case he also asked Judge Franklin U. Valderrama to declare the confirmation suit related to it and move it onto that judge's calendar. That motion says Sweepsteaks itself designated the two cases as related on its civil cover sheet, and asks for emergency treatment because "a default has been entered against Plaintiff there, a motion for default judgment is pending, and on September 3, 2026 that Court directed the plaintiff there to calculate interest through September 8, 2026."

His filings also allege a pattern of conduct by the operator during the arbitration. Those are one party's allegations in a pending case, made without a lawyer, and no court has found any of them true. We are not repeating them as fact, and Sweepsteaks Limited has not responded to them on the public docket.

How many federal lawsuits does Stake.us have?

CourtListener's caption search returns sixteen federal dockets carrying the Sweepsteaks Limited name, and we read the whole list on September 4. It is a slightly smaller file than sixteen sounds: one is an Eighth Circuit appeal of a Minnesota case already on the list, and one New Jersey case is docketed twice. Fifteen of the sixteen have a player as the first-named party, most of them suing and being routed into arbitration. This is the only docket in the set where the operator is the plaintiff.

Zawadzki's own case, No. 1:26-cv-04478, is one of the other fifteen. In Massachusetts, separately, the Deleon plaintiffs moved on August 31 to vacate their award. Other Stake.us dockets we have written up include the Minnesota order refusing to compel arbitration, the New Jersey Drake class action removed to federal court, and the New York judge's jurisdiction question.

Nothing on this docket changes availability or balances in any state. It is a collection action against one named individual, and the court is being asked to enforce an award, not to decide whether the sweepstakes model is lawful in Illinois or anywhere else. The state's own position on the model is on our Illinois sweepstakes legality page.

If the legal file is what bothers you rather than the games, our Stake.us review explains why the brand carries our lowest Trust and Safety score, our Stake.us alternatives comparison lines up the closest matches, our head-to-head comparison pages put two brands next to each other, and our ranked list of the best sweepstakes casinos shows which brands score highest against the 12 criteria we weight.

Sources & documents

• Sweepsteaks Limited d/b/a Stake.us v. Zawadzki, No. 1:26-cv-06840 (N.D. Ill.) - full docket
• Zawadzki v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 1:26-cv-04478 (N.D. Ill.) - full docket
• Emergency motion for reassignment of related case, filed September 3, 2026 (PDF)
• Defendant's Exhibit P-1, docketed September 4, 2026 (PDF)
• Zawadzki's verified complaint, filed April 2026 (PDF)
• CourtListener docket-entry index for No. 1:26-cv-06840
• CourtListener caption search for "Sweepsteaks" federal dockets - the sixteen-docket list above, read September 4, 2026

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