Drake, Adin Ross Move to Dismiss Stake.us New Mexico Suit

Drake and Adin Ross each filed a motion to dismiss on September 7, 2026, asking a federal judge to drop them from the Stake.us class action in New Mexico because the court has no personal jurisdiction over them: their livestreams, they argue, were merely visible in the state rather than aimed at it. Ross's sworn declaration adds a fact neither side had put on the record before: a consultant bought him a New Mexico property in February 2026, after the suit was filed.

We said in August that the two promoters faced a 21-day deadline and put it at September 8 on our own arithmetic. They filed a day early, on Labor Day. We pulled all four documents off the federal docket this evening and read them: two motions to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2), and a signed declaration from each man. A Missouri judge gave the same two men the same 21-day window in a parallel case last month, and refused the plaintiff there the discovery he wanted into their contacts with that state.

The case is Torres v. Sweepsteaks Limited; Adin Ross; and Aubrey Drake Graham, No. 1:25-cv-01292, in the District of New Mexico. Nothing filed on September 7 decides whether Stake.us runs an unlawful operation. These are jurisdiction motions. They argue about which courthouse, not about who is right.

What did Adin Ross disclose about New Mexico?

It appears twice, and only one of the two carries the date. Paragraph 9 of his sworn declaration reads: "In February 2026, months after the complaint in this lawsuit was filed, a third-party consultant purchased a property in New Mexico on my behalf through an entirely remote process." Footnote 2 of his brief repeats the substance but drops the month, saying only that the purchase came "months after the filing of the Complaint."

He goes on: "The property is in no way related to the claims asserted in this action. I do not use this property as a residence, mailing address, office, or for any similar purpose. I have never traveled to New Mexico to visit this property."

His lawyers get in front of it rather than waiting to be asked. The footnote argues that a post-filing purchase "has no bearing on the jurisdictional analysis," citing the Tenth Circuit's 2020 decision in XMission, L.C. v. Fluent LLC for the rule that a plaintiff cannot use later contacts with a state to sue over earlier ones. That is a real doctrine and it may well work. It is also the only fact in either filing that a reader of the August status report could not have predicted.

What do the two motions actually argue?

The same thing, in two voices. Neither man is "at home" in New Mexico, so there is no general jurisdiction. And neither aimed anything at New Mexico specifically, so there is no specific jurisdiction.

Ross states he has "never traveled to or resided in the state of New Mexico" and that he resides in Florida. Drake's declaration, executed September 2, opens with a line that reads oddly on a first pass: "I reside in Washington, Texas. I have never resided in the state of New Mexico." The complaint itself pleads that his domicile is Texas, and his brief relies on that.

Both declarations then use near-identical wording about the content itself. Ross: any Stake.us content "has been published solely on nationally or globally available internet platforms, including Kick, Instagram, and X." Drake's paragraph 6 says the same, platform for platform.

The legal hinge is a 2011 Tenth Circuit case, Shrader v. Biddinger, which distinguishes a defendant "intentionally directing" activity at a state from "just having the activity or operation accessible there." Drake's brief puts the argument in one sentence: "All Plaintiffs can do is condemn Mr. Graham for sharing Stake-related content aimed at a national, if not global, audience, content that is as accessible in any other state as it is in New Mexico."

Against that, the plaintiffs' pleaded allegations, quoted in both briefs, are that Stake "pays online influencer-Defendants Adin Ross ('Ross') and Aubrey Drake Graham ('Drake') each millions of dollars yearly" to livestream casino play, and that when the two "purport to gamble online with Stake.com, they often do not do so with their own money despite telling the public in New Mexico and elsewhere the opposite." Those are allegations. No court has tested them.

Is Stake.com the same as Stake.us?

Not according to Drake's own brief. It describes Stake.com, the crypto sportsbook he promotes abroad, as "a separate platform that is not available to users in New Mexico or anywhere else in the United States." Both briefs call Stake.us a "free-to-play social gaming platform," which is the operator's framing of a product our guide to how sweepstakes casinos work explains rather differently.

What happens next in the Stake.us New Mexico case?

Both men reserve the right to join the operator's anticipated arbitration motion if these motions fail. Ross's brief puts it plainly in its own footnote 1: he "reserves the right to join Defendant Sweepsteaks Limited's anticipated motion to compel arbitration if the Court denies this Motion." So a player watching this for a ruling on legality may be waiting a long time. Two procedural gates stand in front of the merits, and the second one is the clause that sends the case to a private arbitrator. In Virginia that clause has already done its work: a judge sent a Stake.us class action naming both promoters into individual arbitration on July 30, 2026.

New Mexico has not banned sweepstakes casinos. The question here is narrower and, for players in every state, more useful: whether a promoter paid to stream a product into your state can be sued where you live. We are also tracking the same defendants in the New Jersey class action removed to federal court, and the corporate detail sits on our Sweepsteaks Limited operator profile.

Sources & documents

• Aubrey Drake Graham's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, September 7, 2026 (PDF), 18 pages, for the Shrader argument and the Stake.com description
• Declaration of Aubrey Drake Graham, executed September 2, 2026 (PDF), for the residence and platform statements
• Adin Ross's motion to dismiss and memorandum in support, September 7, 2026 (PDF), 13 pages, for footnote 2 on the property purchase and the four quoted complaint allegations
• Declaration of Adin Ross, executed September 7, 2026 in Miami-Dade County, Florida (PDF), for paragraph 9
• Torres v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 1:25-cv-01292 (D.N.M.) - full docket, read September 8, 2026

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