Poker.org report
Legal efforts to curtail the growing sweeps-based gambling industry continue to appear in state after state across the US. One of the most recent actions — and also, potentially, one of the most dangerous to the interests of sweeps-based operators — has emerged this week in Massachusetts, where a new class action has been filed against VGW Holdings US, the States-facing parent entity of Chumba Casino, Luckyland Slots, and Global Poker.
The eye-opening action was filed on Tuesday and docketed on Wednesday in the Superior Court of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, on behalf of a plaintiff identified only as “M.M.” for the time being.
Site accused of real money gambling
Filed by attorney Joel D. Smith of the Boston law firm Smith Krivoshey PC, the action claims several causes and claims for relief, alleging violations of Massachusetts’s gambling laws, unjust enrichment, and other deceptive practices including the whitewashing of the word “gambling” from the VGW sites in question, despite plaintiff’s assertions that the sites are, indeed, real-money gambling.
For the time being, the lawsuit references only the Chumba Casino and Luckyland Slots sites along with several VGW corporate entities. Global Poker is not mentioned, possibly because the lead plaintiff, M.M., did not gamble on Global Poker. However, if certified as a class action and other plaintiffs are added, Global Poker could be added as an additional defendant, since it employs the identical dual-currency sweeps model and also offers many of the same slots and other casino table games as the othertwo VGW sites.