Florida Escalates Grey Market Gambling War with Stake, VGW Lawsuits

Florida has long had a reputation for attracting unusual characters, and its gambling industry has certainly done its part over the years to keep that tradition alive.

So far in 2026, the Sunshine State has been attempting to crack down hard on illegal gambling, both online and off, seizing thousands of grey-market slot machines from strip malls, bars, and even makeshift home casinos.

Now, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is once again rallying his troops against sweepstakes sites. This time, however, he has rolled out the heavy guns, with some of the online sweepstakes casinos such as Stake and VGW (operator of Chumba Casino and Luckyland Casino) firmly in his crosshairs. But this lawsuit may prove more consequential for the third-party collaborators dragged into the fray than its intended targets.

Florida Takes Aim at the Money

Filed on August 19th, these two new lawsuits take the tried-and-true tack that the dual-currency sweepstakes model used by both Stake and VGW amounts to illegal gambling under existing Florida law. Uthmeier also argues that marketing these types of games as "free," "safe," or "legal" violates Florida’s consumer protection laws.

“If it looks like a casino, takes money like a casino, and pays out like a casino, it’s a casino,” Uthmeier stated when announcing his actions.

The state isn’t content to simply force these operators to pack their bags. Florida hopes to recover some of the millions lost by consumers while simultaneously pursuing injunctions and other penalties across a myriad of payment processing companies:

• The VGW Lawsuit: Names companies like Worldpay, Trustly, and Yodlee for moving money between players and the casino.

• The Stake Lawsuit: Includes companies like Praxis Tech and Breeze Lab Payments.

This ups the ante considerably for other banks and financial providers across the state connected to grey-market gaming. Florida has spent years chasing individual offshore and sweepstakes casinos around the internet. Convincing payment companies that processing these transactions carries real liability might finally cut off the funding that is the lifeblood of these gambling schemes.

Uthmeier had already fired a warning shot in June, notifying payment processors that they were potentially running afoul of Florida’s RICO statutes. Now, it appears he has them bracketed in, and the real shelling has begun.

The Long-Running Whack-a-Mole Game

This is hardly Florida’s first sortie against online grey-market gambling. In February 2025, the Florida Gaming Control Commission sent cease-and-desist letters to Bovada, BetUS, and MyBookie, ordering all three to immediately stop taking wagers from Floridians.

The state has been even busier on the retail brick-and-mortar side. In the past eight months alone, authorities have:

• Seized over 3,000 illegal gambling machines.

• Confiscated hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• Launched raids resulting in at least 81 arrests.

In some cases, local law enforcement turned out to be a little too involved. Former Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez is currently awaiting trial after racketeering charges alleged that he helped protect and profit from an illegal gambling operation in his jurisdiction.

One of the strangest aspects of Florida's grey market is how much of it proceeds in plain sight. Shortly after the Attorney General filed these lawsuits, regulators seized 60 illegal slot machines from a Cape Coral business operating under the guise of a legal bingo hall. Despite the crackdowns, potentially tens of thousands more machines operate openly - complete with neon signs and tinted windows - in strip malls and residences from Pensacola to Point Buoy.

The market for online casinos in Florida is even more difficult to contain. Removing one or two of the largest operators won’t dent the overall supply when dozens of crypto casinos and offshore sportsbooks remain just a few clicks away. This explains Uthmeier’s broader campaign: making banks and financial service providers think twice about doing business with them might succeed where chasing individual websites has failed.

Only in Florida

Florida appears to have a "fifth column" problem regarding just how mainstream some of these grey-market operators have become. This was best highlighted at this year's Daytona 500, where Tyler Reddick raced in front of 150,000 attendees and 7.5 million television viewers in a car tightly wrapped and sponsored by none other than Chumba Casino.

Just a few months before Florida's Attorney General sued Chumba’s parent company for offering illegal gambling, its name was prominently displayed on Victory Lane at the state’s most famous racetrack.

Furthermore, because gambling regulation is rarely straightforward, residents don’t necessarily have to look offshore for something resembling an online casino. Hard Rock Bet now offers dozens of games on its sportsbook app that look and play remarkably like online slots. However, instead of relying on a random number generator, these games pay out based on the outcomes of previous motorsports races from around the country.

This ingenious bit of regulatory engineering allows the games to operate legally as "sports wagers" under the compact between the state and the Seminole Tribe, which holds the current monopoly for Florida online sports betting. Florida regulators appear perfectly content with this legal distinction.

Conclusion

This distinction cuts right to the heart of Florida’s ongoing gambling problem. Demand isn't going anywhere; decades of raids, seizures, and cease-and-desist letters have made that clear.

Uthmeier's latest offensive recognizes that reality by attacking the safe-harbor entitlements previously afforded to the financial infrastructure keeping this system running. Whether this escalation is enough to finally turn the tide remains to be seen, but making banks reluctant to move money may ultimately accomplish what Florida has repeatedly failed to do on the ground and online.