Stake.us New Jersey Drake Lawsuit Moves to Federal Court

A second Drake and Stake.us class action is live in federal court: a New Jersey player sued in Monmouth County on April 22, 2026, and Stake.us quietly removed the case on July 8, arguing that its arbitration clause points outside the United States.

The Virginia case that made headlines last week is not the only one. This one names the same core group of defendants, pleads New Jersey's own racketeering statute rather than the federal version, and asks a judge to bar Stake.us from signing up New Jersey residents at all.

The April filing itself was announced at the time by the plaintiff's own firm, Impresa Legal Group, in an April 24 press release that ran on the wires. What has gone uncovered is everything since: the removal, the grounds Stake.us chose, and the six-month clock in the statute the complaint is built on. We read both federal documents on August 4.

What is the New Jersey case?

Nufio v. Sweepsteaks Ltd., originally MON-L-001564-26 in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Monmouth County, filed April 22, 2026. It is now No. 3:26-cv-08394 in the District of New Jersey, before Judge Robert Kirsch and Magistrate Judge J. Brendan Day.

We read both the 15-page notice of removal and the 52-page state complaint attached to it. The defendants are Sweepsteaks Ltd. d/b/a Stake.us, Kick Streaming Pty Ltd., Aubrey Drake Graham, Adin Ross, Livingston Allen (DJ Akademiks), George Nguyen, and unnamed Does.

Five counts, and the mix is different from the Virginia case:

The proposed class is nationwide: everyone in the United States who created or accessed a Stake.us account, bought Gold Coins bundled with Stake Cash, and lost at least one wager using Stake Cash in the past three years. A New Jersey-only class is pleaded in the alternative.

How long do I have to sue for gambling losses in New Jersey?

Six calendar months from each payment, under N.J. Stat. § 2A:40-5, and that is the part of this case a New Jersey player should read first.

Count V is the money count, and it works the way Minnesota's does. The complaint recites that under § 2A:40-1 anyone who pays a wager "may sue for and recover the money or thing so paid or delivered."

Then read the next section yourself, because the complaint's summary of it is easy to misread. Section 2A:40-5 gives the loser that civil action "provided such action is brought within 6 calendar months after payment or delivery." The clock starts when you paid, not when you found out the platform might be unlawful and not when someone else filed a lawsuit. Section 2A:40-6 lets any other person sue for the same money once the loser's six months have run.

Spell out what that means for a reader. If you bought Gold Coin packages on Stake.us more than six calendar months ago, the § 2A:40-5 route to that particular money has closed, whatever happens to this case. Money you paid inside the last six months is the only part still inside the window, and it keeps rolling off. Nobody should read a class action filed in April as pausing a clock that runs from their own payment dates.

What does the complaint actually allege?

These are unproven allegations in a court filing. No defendant has answered them on the merits and none has been found liable.

The complaint alleges the defendants used the platform to fund a bot operation that inflated streaming counts for Drake's music, and that the plaintiff signed up because Drake's endorsement and on-stream play made it look legitimate. It puts Drake's promotional payments at around $100,000,000 a year and alleges diverted royalties "estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars."

The line that matters for a sweepstakes player is narrower and has nothing to do with music: "had Plaintiff known that Stake had been barred from operating in New Jersey, he would not have signed up for an account or spent money on the platform." New Jersey banned the dual-currency model in 2025, and the claim is that people kept signing up anyway because a celebrity was playing on camera.

Stake.us has answered one point already, in its own removal papers. It says the complaint "explicitly conflates Stake.us, the only Stake entity named as a Defendant, with Stake.com, a separate, nonparty entity." Two different companies, one brand family, and a filing that treats them as one. That objection will come up again.

Why did Stake.us move the case to federal court?

Two reasons, and the second is the interesting one.

The routine ground is the Class Action Fairness Act: a class action, more than 100 members, minimal diversity, and more than $5,000,000 in dispute. The complaint itself says damages are "expected to be in excess of $5,000,000, plus treble damages, costs, and attorney's fees," which does the operator's work for it.

The second ground is 9 U.S.C. §§ 203 and 205, the part of the Federal Arbitration Act that implements the 1958 New York Convention on foreign arbitral awards. Stake.us argues the case "relates to an arbitration agreement falling under the Convention." Read plainly, that is an operator telling a US court that the arbitration clause in its terms points somewhere outside the United States, and that this alone makes the dispute federal. Sweepsteaks Ltd. is a Cyprus company, with a principal place of business in Limassol.

Section 205 also lets a defendant remove "at any time before trial," which is why a case served on June 9 could be pulled out of state court a month later without any deadline problem.

Does this change anything for players?

It confirms the pattern rather than breaking it. Every serious challenge to Sweepsteaks Limited runs into the same clause, and our read of the Virginia ruling counted six federal district courts that have enforced it against one that refused. The single refusal is an order out of Minnesota and is under appeal at the Eighth Circuit.

The plaintiff's own filing concedes the overlap. Its Rule 4:5-1 certification states that the matter is similar to the action filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, which is the case a judge sent into individual arbitration on July 30.

So the practical position for a player has not moved. Before you have a dispute, the arbitration clause and the class-action waiver are the two paragraphs that decide what you can ever do about it, and our guide to how these sites are structured explains why that clause sits where it does. After you have one, the strongest thing in your hands is usually a complete record of what you paid and when.

If you are in New Jersey, none of this reopens the market. The state's ban is in force, and this case does not change what you can play.

What it does change is the timing question. Two of the three routes out of a sweepstakes dispute are slow: the class action takes years and may never be certified, and the arbitration clause has been enforced in six federal districts against one refusal. The third route, § 2A:40-5, is fast and short, and it expires on a rolling six-month basis whether or not anyone tells you. If you have lost money on Stake.us in the last six months and you want to do something about it, the useful step this week is to pull your purchase history and put a date on each payment, then take those dates to a New Jersey lawyer. Waiting for this docket to resolve is the one thing that guarantees the window closes.

Sources & documents

• Notice of removal, Nufio v. Sweepsteaks Ltd., D.N.J., filed July 8, 2026
• Class action complaint, Superior Court of New Jersey, Monmouth County, April 22, 2026
• Docket entries for 3:26-cv-08394, retrieved August 4, 2026
• Federal case list for Sweepsteaks and VGW since June 1, 2026
• N.J. Stat. § 2A:40-5, action by loser to recover money lost at gaming, with limitation
• Impresa Legal Group press release announcing the New Jersey filing, April 24, 2026

Both court documents were pulled from the federal docket and read in full on August 4, 2026. Every claim about the defendants is an allegation in a complaint, attributed as such. Stake.us's characterisation of the complaint is quoted from its own removal papers. The six-month limitation is quoted from the statute itself rather than from the complaint's summary of it, because the two are not worded the same way. The April filing was publicised by the plaintiff's own law firm; the July 8 removal, as far as we can find, has not been reported. We contacted no party for comment and none has commented publicly on the removal.

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