Chumba Owner VGW Pays New York $8M; Sweeps Coin Claims Open

New York's attorney general announced an $8 million settlement on September 9, 2026 with VGW, the company behind Chumba Casino, Global Poker and LuckyLand Slots. Page five of the signed settlement carries something the press release never mentions: New York players who never received VGW's 2025 phase-out email can request their old Sweeps Coins back until August 31, 2027.

The document is Assurance of Discontinuance No. 26-052. We pulled the signed PDF from the attorney general's own site and read all 11 pages. The money is the headline everyone else ran; the redemption clause is the part that can put cash in a reader's hand.

Four companies signed it: VGW Holdings Pty. Ltd. (formerly VGW Holdings Ltd.), VGW Luckyland Inc., VGW Malta Limited and VGW GP Limited. Between them they run Chumba Casino, Global Poker and LuckyLand Slots. Nothing in it is an admission: paragraph 13 records that VGW "neither admit nor deny" the findings, and paragraph 23 says the Assurance "should not be construed, as an admission of liability."

Can New York players still cash out old Sweeps Coins?

Some of them, and the window is open for another year. Paragraph 18 is worth reading closely:

For one year following the effective date of this Agreement, Respondents shall enable New York Consumers who did not previously receive a notification from VGW, as described above in Paragraph 10, to submit a request to redeem sweeps coins that were in the Consumer's account with a Respondent as of June 2, 2025.

Three narrow conditions have to be met, and all three at once:

1. You are a New York resident. The Assurance defines one as "any person residing in New York."
2. You held redeemable Sweeps Coins on June 2, 2025. They have to have been in a Chumba, Global Poker or LuckyLand account on that date, the day VGW stopped offering Sweeps Coins in the state.
3. You never received VGW's phase-out notification. That is the email the company told the attorney general set a deadline of August 1, 2025 to redeem.

The third condition is narrower than it sounds, and it is also the whole point. VGW's own account, recorded in paragraph 10, is that it notified its New York customers. Paragraph 18 exists for the players that notice did not reach.

What will a claim actually pay?

Read the second half of paragraph 18, because it does more work than a settlement figure usually does. VGW must pay "fiat currency at the rate of exchange and as otherwise set out in the then-applicable version of Respondents' sweepstakes rules."

The Assurance never defines "then-applicable," and it does not say whether that means the rules in force on June 2, 2025 or the rules in force when the request is made. We are not going to guess which. What the phrase does make clear is that this is a redemption under the ordinary rulebook, not a negotiated settlement rate, and "as otherwise set out" pulls in the rest of that rulebook too, minimums included. On the figures we verified in our own reviews, that matters:

• Chumba Casino: 10 SC for a gift card, 100 SC for cash.
• Global Poker: 10 SC for a gift card, 50 SC for cash.
• LuckyLand Slots: a flat 50 SC, gift card or cash.

A New York player who was sitting on 4 SC in Chumba in June 2025 has a right under paragraph 18 and no obvious way to use it. Nothing in the document waives a minimum.

The Assurance also creates no claims form and no portal. It places the obligation on VGW to enable requests and leaves the mechanics entirely open, so the only route is the operator's own support channel. Quote Assurance No. 26-052 when you write, and keep what you send. Our guide to how to get a redemption paid covers what a support request needs to contain.

A year is also far longer than any VGW wind-down we have been able to compare. Those ran on schedules the company set itself, from 57 days in New Jersey down to 14 in West Virginia. New York is the one window an attorney general wrote.

Which dates matter in the VGW New York settlement?

Ten of them, running from the attorney general's first warning letter in April 2025 to the day the redemption right expires in August 2027.

What happens to a LuckyLand claim after September 14, 2026?

This is the one thing in this piece with a deadline measured in days rather than months. September 14, 2026 is the last day LuckyLand Slots accepts any redemption request from anyone, under the shutdown calendar VGW published in July. The Assurance never mentions the closure and sets no special handling for it.

Paragraph 24 binds "any successor, assignee, or transferee" to the Assurance, so on paper a New York claim is not supposed to die with the brand. But the document is silent on how a LuckyLand claim filed after September 14 gets processed, and the answer to a question a settlement does not address is a support ticket, not a right. If you are a New York player with LuckyLand Sweeps Coins from June 2025, file this week and treat the August 2027 date as a backstop rather than a plan.

Chumba and Global Poker are not closing, so the full year applies there.

What did New York accuse VGW of doing?

Running unlicensed gambling and dressing the purchase up as a giveaway. The Assurance sets out the coin economics in the operator's own numbers: $5 bought 5.05 Sweeps Coins and 1,000,000 Gold Coins, and $50 bought 51.50 Sweeps Coins and 15,000,000 Gold Coins. Paragraph 4 finds that the Sweeps Coins a buyer received were "roughly equivalent to the dollar amount of the purchase price," while VGW "characterized these transactions as sales of gold coins, with sweeps coins included for 'free.'" The attorney general's press release puts the same finding more bluntly: players were "receiving approximately one coin for every dollar spent on the platform."

The finding turns on the split between the two currencies, which our guide to Gold Coins versus Sweeps Coins sets out: only one of them is ever redeemable for money.

The free-entry route existed, and the Assurance describes it in unflattering detail: five Sweeps Coins for a hand-written mailed request "required to conform to numerous requirements related to postcard and envelope size, information required, and postcard format," with a five-minute timer between codes. Our guide to how the dual-currency model works covers that trade-off across the category, and our walkthrough of getting free Sweeps Coins without buying anything documents what the mail-in route asks for at other brands.

The findings also cite a Chumba Casino Facebook post showing a player holding a check for $1,098,973.95 and calling them "ChumbaCasino.com's 50th millionaire."

Why did the $8 million not come from New York's sweepstakes ban?

Because the ban came too late to reach the conduct, and the state did not need it. Paragraph 12 finds violations of New York Penal Law sections 225.10 and 225.20, which cover promoting gambling and possessing gambling records, plus Executive Law section 63(12), the repeated-illegal-acts provision. New York's sweepstakes-specific statute appears in the findings only as background.

That ordering matters well beyond New York. VGW stopped selling in the state in June 2025, six months before the ban was signed, so the $8 million rests entirely on general gambling and consumer-protection law that most states already have. Any state weighing whether it needs a bespoke sweepstakes bill now has a worked example saying it might not. Our explainer on where sweepstakes casinos are legal tracks which states went the statutory route.

A footnote on the paperwork, because on a page like this the numbers have to be right. Paragraph 11 cites the December 5, 2025 law as "Senate Bill S5925A." That bill does not exist. The Assembly's records show S05925 of the 2025-26 session is a Cleare bill on shelter information for LGBTQ New Yorkers, and it was never amended, so there is no S05925A of any kind. The sweepstakes ban is S05935A, sponsored by Senator Addabbo, same-as A06745-A, passed June 11 and 17, 2025, signed as Chapter 605 and adding section 912 to the racing, pari-mutuel wagering and breeding law. Our New York state page has carried S5935A throughout; it also flagged a cross-source disagreement about the companion Assembly number, and the Assembly's own record settles it as A06745-A. We have updated that page accordingly.

Which other sweepstakes casinos did New York name?

Twenty-six platforms received cease and desist letters in June 2025. Sixteen are brands we review: Chanced, Chumba, Funrize, Global Poker, High 5 Casino, Jackpota, LuckyLand, McLuck, Mega Bonanza, NoLimitCoins, Play Fame, RealPrize, SpinBlitz, Sportzino, TaoFortune and Zula Casino. The other ten are DingDingDing, Fliff, Fortune Coins, Fortune Wheelz, FunzCity, Golden Hearts Games, Sidepot, SweepSlots, Sweeptastic and Yay Casino.

A full-text search of the attorney general's own press-release archive on September 9, 2026 returns exactly two releases on online sweepstakes casinos: the June 2025 cease and desist announcement and today's. No monetary settlement with any of the other 25 has been announced. The office has also said nothing about whether any of them remain under investigation, and we are not going to guess. What this document establishes is the template and the price. Other states have taken the same category to task and landed somewhere different: Illinois sent its own cease-and-desist letters, and Florida's attorney general sued VGW and Stake.us.

Could Chumba come back to New York?

The Assurance leaves a door, and it is a narrow one. Paragraph 17 only opens if the penal-law sections and section 912 are "expressly repealed, revised, overridden or judicially construed" to permit the conduct. VGW's own view of the law does not start the clock; an actual change in it does. Once that happens, VGW may notify the attorney general in writing, and the office has 30 days to object. Absent an objection, paragraph 16 "shall no longer prohibit the relevant conduct." If the office does object, VGW has to go to court.

So silence is consent, on a 30-day fuse, after the law itself moves. That is a live clause rather than boilerplate, in a year when preemption arguments have been running through the federal courts on the prediction-market side, and few operator settlements bother to negotiate a re-entry route at all. VGW also agreed, in paragraph 31, not to publicly deny the findings, which is why you should not expect a rebuttal.

If you are in a state where sweepstakes play is still permitted, our ranked list of tested sweepstakes casinos and our separate ranking of the highest-payout sweepstakes casinos, scored on redemption floors and clearing times alone, are the more useful pages. VGW is separately defending a Mississippi class action that restarted in August.

Sources & documents

• NYAG press release, September 9, 2026 - the $8 million announcement, the attorney general's quotes and the "one coin for every dollar" characterization
• Assurance of Discontinuance No. 26-052 (PDF, 11 pages) - the signed settlement, and the source for paragraphs 4 to 39, the coin ratios, the redemption clause and the August 31, 2026 effective date
• NYAG press release, June 6, 2025 - the cease and desist action and the full list of 26 named platforms
• New York Assembly record for S05935A - the sweepstakes ban: Addabbo sponsorship, A06745-A companion, dated action list and Chapter 605 signing
• New York Assembly record for S05925 - the unamended social services bill nearest to the number the Assurance cites

21+. This is news reporting, not legal advice. Nothing above is a finding by any court, and VGW has neither admitted nor denied the attorney general's findings. If gambling is a problem, call or text 1-800-GAMBLER. Responsible gaming resources.