Stake.us New Mexico: Drake, Adin Ross Face 21-Day Deadline

A federal judge in New Mexico partially lifted a stay on August 17, 2026 and gave Drake (named in the case as Aubrey Drake Graham) and Adin Ross 21 days to file motions to dismiss the Stake.us class action for lack of personal jurisdiction. On our count that puts the filings due September 8. The arbitration motion all three defendants filed jointly stays frozen, so the only part of this case now moving is the part aimed at the two celebrity promoters.

We pulled the two-page order and the nine-page joint status report behind it off the federal docket and read both, then read the docket itself back to the December 2025 removal. The case is Torres v. Sweepsteaks Limited; Adin Ross; and Aubrey Drake Graham, No. 1:25-cv-01292, in the District of New Mexico, brought by Nathaniel Torres and Rory Michie. Chief United States District Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales signed the order.

Nothing in either document decides whether Stake.us runs an unlawful gambling operation. No defendant has been found liable for anything. What changed is the running order.

What did the New Mexico judge actually order?

Six numbered paragraphs, and the split between them is the story.

The order was entered on Monday August 17, so 21 days lands on Monday September 7. That is Labor Day, and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6(a)(1)(C) pushes a deadline falling on a legal holiday to the next working day, which makes it Tuesday September 8, 2026. The date is our arithmetic, not the judge's: the order itself says only "21 days after entry."

One thing that table does not say, and the order does not either. The frozen motion to compel arbitration is not the casino's alone. Docket entry 18, filed February 6, 2026, is a joint "MOTION to Compel Arbitration and Stay Proceedings by Aubrey Drake Graham, Adin Ross, Sweepsteaks Limited" - all three defendants. The split here is between two kinds of motion, not between the operator and the men who promoted it.

Nor is this the first time Graham has faced this deadline. His motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, with the declaration the plaintiffs now attack, went on the docket at entry 16 on the same February day. The March 31 stay stopped it. What August 17 does is order it refiled.

That is what they asked for. In the joint status report filed August 13, the defendants argued that keeping the whole case frozen "would substantially prejudice Defendants Graham and Ross because it may be months, if not longer, before the motion to compel arbitration in Urdan is fully and finally resolved." They also told the court the sequence runs their way regardless: "The Court will need to resolve the personal jurisdiction motions before ruling on any motion to compel arbitration."

The plaintiffs wanted the opposite. They asked for another 90 days of stay and, failing that, for jurisdictional discovery.

Why does personal jurisdiction matter more than the gambling question?

Because it decides whether a New Mexico player can sue a promoter in New Mexico at all, and that is a different question from whether sweepstakes casinos are legal in the state. New Mexico has no sweepstakes ban on its books.

The filing quotes Graham's own declaration. He states he has not "directed, tailored, or targeted [his] Stake.us-related promotional content specifically to New Mexico residents or to the New Mexico market" and has never "created Stake.us-related content with the intention or understanding that [his] content would be used to advertise Stake.us specifically in the state of New Mexico."

The plaintiffs' answer is that a nationwide broadcast lands in every state. According to their complaint, as summarised in the status report, viewers of Graham's Kick.com livestreams promoting Stake can subscribe to his channel for a monthly fee, "95% of which goes directly to Drake." They argue the court can infer from his follower count that he "has conducted at least a 'single transaction' within New Mexico," which is all the state's long-arm statute needs.

They also say they cannot prove more without discovery, because they "do not have access to the details of Drake's partnership with Stake." The defendants answer that "Plaintiff's speculation about what discovery 'may reveal' about Defendants' contacts with New Mexico is not enough," and point the court to a 2022 New Mexico federal decision holding that a request for jurisdictional discovery "must be supported by more than a mere 'hunch that it might yield jurisdictionally relevant facts.'" That last phrase is a quotation from case law in the defendants' brief, not their own description of the plaintiffs. Judge Gonzales did not rule on jurisdictional discovery either way. He kept discovery stayed and set a briefing schedule.

How is Stake.us doing across all these cases?

The August 13 filing carries the parties' own scoreboard, agreed between opposing counsel and filed under signature. Five parallel actions, five different postures. It is not a complete census of the litigation against this operator, only of the cases these parties told this judge about: our own coverage of the second Drake class action removed to New Jersey federal court is not on this list, and neither is the New York case where the judge raised a related jurisdiction-before-arbitration question.

Read that column and the pattern is hard to miss. Within these five cases the operator is two for three on arbitration, and the wider record runs the same way: our report on the Virginia judge who sent eight Stake.us players into individual arbitration counted six federal district courts that had enforced this clause against one that refused. The one that refused is the Minnesota court, and it is now under appeal, so the single player-side win in this group is not final.

One detail the status report adds that we had not published: Sweepsteaks Limited "is the sole named defendant in Urdan and has not raised the defense of personal jurisdiction in that action." The Illinois case, the one everything else is waiting on, does not test the question New Mexico is about to decide.

What are the key dates in the Stake.us New Mexico case?

Seven dates, and only the last two are still ahead. Everything from September 8 down is a deadline rather than something that has happened.

What does this mean if you play at Stake.us?

Practically, nothing changes about your account today. Games run, coins redeem, and no court has ordered anything about balances.

What it changes is your realistic expectation of ever being heard by a judge. Sweepsteaks Limited has had its arbitration clause enforced by most federal courts that have ruled on it and rejected by one, in Minnesota, which it has appealed. If you signed up, you almost certainly agreed to arbitrate individually, and that is the default outcome across this group of cases.

The New Mexico order is worth watching for a narrower reason. If Graham and Ross are dismissed for want of jurisdiction, the practical lesson is that a promoter who reaches your state through a national livestream may still be out of reach of your state's courts. If they are not dismissed, endorsement deals in this industry get more expensive, and that eventually shows up in the size of the offers you see.

If you are following this one, two dates do the work. Around September 8 the two motions to dismiss should appear on the docket, and they will contain the fullest public account yet of what Graham and Ross say their Stake.us deals actually were. On or before November 11 the parties file their next joint status report, which is where the Urdan ruling in Illinois will surface if it has landed by then.

Nothing here touches our ranking. Stake.us keeps its place on our ranked list of tested brands on the strength of its product, with the open litigation noted on the review. If the pile of cases is what puts you off, we line up the nearest options in alternatives to Stake.us.

Sources & documents

• Order Partially Lifting Stay, Torres v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 1:25-cv-01292 (D.N.M.), Doc. 25, filed August 17, 2026 - two pages, signed by Chief Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales
• Joint Status Report, same case, Doc. 24, filed August 13, 2026 - nine pages, including both sides' positions and the status of the five parallel actions
• CourtListener docket, Torres v. Sweepsteaks Limited
• CourtListener docket-entry search for the same docket

Every quotation above is verbatim from the two federal filings we downloaded on August 18, 2026. We also read the full docket the same day: 39 entries, the August 17 order at entry 25 is the most recent, and the February 6 filings at entries 16 and 18 are the source for the point about who filed what. The September 8 date is our own calculation from the August 17 entry date and Rule 6(a)(1)(C), not a date the court has stated. Case posture for Ridley, Dixon, Wolters, Urdan and Killham is taken from the parties' own joint status report rather than from our own docket sweep, and we have not independently re-read the South Carolina and Missouri files. This article makes no allegation of wrongdoing against any operator or individual: the claims described are allegations in a complaint that no court has tested, and the defendants deny the jurisdictional facts. We did not put questions to Sweepsteaks Limited, to Graham or to Ross before publishing. If any of them responds, this piece gets updated.

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