Chumba Casino Owner VGW Faces Two Minnesota Class Actions

VGW, the owner of Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots and Global Poker, is facing two proposed class actions in Minnesota federal court, filed 15 days apart. The first asks the court to order VGW to hand back every dollar Minnesota residents wagered on those sites inside the limitation period.

Minnesota has no sweepstakes ban. That is exactly why these cases matter. The theory here is not that a new statute closed the market, it is that the old one always did, and that Minnesota's 1905 gambling-loss recovery law lets players sue for their money back without waiting for a legislature.

What is the Minnesota lawsuit against VGW?

Engel v. VGW Holdings Pty Ltd., No. 0:26-cv-03021, landed in the District of Minnesota on June 18, 2026 and sits with District Judge Nancy E. Brasel. We pulled the 32-page complaint off the federal docket and read it. The civil cover sheet files it as diversity fraud.

Nine defendants are named: VGW Holdings Pty Ltd; VGW Holdings U.S., Inc.; VGW US, Inc.; VGW Malta Ltd.; VGW Games Ltd.; VGW Holdings, Ltd.; VGW Luckyland Inc.; VGW Canada; and National Sweepstakes Company LLC, a New York company the complaint describes as VGW's "Payment Administration Agent."

The proposed class is broad: "All Minnesota residents who have paid and wagered money, cryptocurrency, or other things of value to the Gambling Websites within the relevant statute of limitations." The websites named are Chumba Casino, Global Poker, LuckyLand Slots and luckylandcasino.com, which is a separate site from LuckyLand Slots run by a different VGW company.

Five counts follow, and the first is the one with teeth.

Section 541.20 is short and old. Its operative words, which we read on the Minnesota Revisor's own site, are that a person who loses money "by playing at cards, dice, or other game" and pays it to the winner "may sue for and recover such money by a civil action." No fraud needs proving. The plaintiff only has to convince a court that what happened was a game and that he lost.

What does the complaint allege about Chumba and a $75,000 loss?

This is the part a player should read, and every sentence of it is an allegation in a court filing rather than a proven fact.

Named plaintiff Michael Engel began playing Chumba around January 2024 and, the complaint says, "lost approximately $75,000 gambling on Chumba," plus further losses on LuckyLand Slots and Global Poker. It alleges he used the Auto Spin feature to pre-set 100 spins at a time so he could keep playing while working and while driving.

Then this. The complaint alleges Chumba assigned him a dedicated "Account Executive" who "regularly encouraged and enabled" his play by contacting him often and sending free Sweeps Coins, along with gift cards worth up to $100 for Sephora, Best Buy and DoorDash. It alleges that on one occasion the Account Executive contacted him to ask why he had not played for three days. He had been in hospital.

VGW has not answered the complaint. The docket shows an order on a motion for extension of time entered July 31 and an order on a motion for admission pro hac vice entered August 4, which is the ordinary shape of a defence getting itself organised rather than any ruling on the merits. No court has found any defendant liable for anything.

VGW's position is on the front page of its own terms, which we read in the current version, 23.3, dated April 7, 2026: "THE GAMES AND PLATFORM DO NOT OFFER REAL MONEY GAMBLING, AND NO ACTUAL MONEY IS REQUIRED TO PLAY."

Who else is suing VGW in Minnesota?

A second case, Moser v. VGW Holdings Pty Ltd., No. 0:26-cv-03180, was filed on July 3, 2026. Its complaint is not on the public docket, so we cannot report what it claims, only that it exists and that it drew the same two orders in the same week: an extension of time on July 31 and a pro hac vice admission on August 4.

That makes three live federal sweepstakes cases in one district.

The Wolters case is the one we read the arbitration order in, where Judge John R. Tunheim refused to push a Stake.us player into private arbitration. That refusal is under appeal at the Eighth Circuit. Minnesota is now the one district where a sweepstakes operator has been told its arbitration clause does not automatically work, which is a plausible reason plaintiffs' firms are filing there.

Why does VGW still accept Minnesota players?

Because nothing legally requires it to stop, and its own documents say so. Our guide to whether sweepstakes casinos are legal sets out how that question splits state by state. The Chumba terms define Excluded Territory as Washington, Michigan, Montana, Connecticut, Nevada and Delaware. A further eight states are cut out of sweepstakes play: California, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee and West Virginia. Minnesota appears on neither list.

The complaint turns that absence into a claim, arguing that "by excluding Minnesota from these lists, VGW represents to Players that its gambling platform is legal in Minnesota." Whether a judge agrees is an open question. We flagged the same gap between the ban map and the block map across four operators' rules on August 3.

Minnesota's own government has moved twice without closing anything.

1. November 5, 2025. Attorney General Keith Ellison sends letters to 14 online gambling operators, directing them to stop serving the state by December 1 that year. Three of the 14 are sweepstakes brands, including LuckyLand Slots.
2. April 30, 2026. The legislature's ban bill, SF 4474, titled "Online sweepstakes games prohibition," passes the Senate 62-3.
3. May 4, 2026. SF 4474 goes to the House and is referred to Public Safety Finance and Policy.
4. Session close. The bill never comes to a floor vote, so no ban statute exists.

Our Minnesota state page records both, and it is still right that no statute bans the model there. What that page does not yet say is that two class actions are now pending against VGW in federal court, and it needs to.

What should a Minnesota player do now?

Nothing dramatic. Class actions take years and this one has not even drawn a response.

Two practical things do follow. If you have a balance sitting at a VGW brand, get it redeemed rather than parked, because LuckyLand Slots is already winding down on a fixed calendar and that calendar is tighter than most players realise. And if you were a heavy player at Chumba between roughly 2023 and now, keep your purchase records. Under § 541.20 the money you lost is the measure of the claim, and nobody will reconstruct that for you.

If your play stopped being a choice at some point, that matters more than any docket. Our guide to staying in control covers the deposit blocks and self-exclusion routes that work at sweepstakes sites specifically.

Sources & documents

• Class action complaint, Engel v. VGW Holdings Pty Ltd., D. Minn., filed June 18, 2026
• Engel docket entries, retrieved August 4, 2026
• Moser v. VGW Holdings Pty Ltd. docket entries
• District of Minnesota VGW case list
• Minn. Stat. § 541.20, recovery of money lost
• Minn. Stat. § 541.21, commitments for gambling debt void
• Minn. Stat. § 609.76, gross misdemeanor gambling offences
• Chumba Casino Terms and Conditions, version 23.3, April 7, 2026
• Minnesota SF 4474, Online sweepstakes games prohibition, bill status and actions
• KNSI report on the Attorney General's November 2025 order and its December 1 deadline

Every case fact above comes from documents we retrieved from the federal docket on August 4, 2026, and every allegation is an unproven claim in a complaint. We read the Engel complaint in full. The Moser complaint is not publicly available, so we report only its existence, filing date and docket activity, and we make no claim about what it alleges. The Attorney General's website did not respond to our requests on August 4, so the November 5, 2025 announcement is sourced to the quotation of it in the Engel complaint plus contemporaneous reporting of the December 1 deadline, rather than read first-hand. SF 4474's history was taken from the Minnesota Revisor's own bill-status record.

21+. Play responsibly. If gambling stops being fun, help is free and confidential: call or text 1-800-GAMBLER, or see our responsible gaming resources.