A New York man identified only as John Doe says his life veered off course before he was old enough to drive, and he is now suing Stake.com and Coinbase in New York County Supreme Court. In a new complaint, he alleges an offshore gambling site and a major crypto exchange helped enable years of illegal underage wagering that began when he was about 13, wiped out his savings, pushed him to leave Indiana University within a week of arriving and ultimately landed him in treatment for compulsive gambling and panic disorder. The lawsuit seeks money damages along with court orders to tighten age checks and cut off VPN and mirror-site workarounds.
The complaint, filed April 7 in Manhattan, names Medium Rare N.V. d/b/a Stake.com, Sweepsteaks Ltd. d/b/a Stake.us, founders Bijan Tehrani and Edward Craven, and Coinbase, Inc. and Coinbase Global, Inc., among other corporate defendants. It brings claims under New York consumer-protection law and common-law negligence and seeks compensatory and punitive damages, statutory treble damages under N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §349 and injunctive relief requiring document and liveness verification along with VPN detection, according to the filing posted by ALM.
As reported by ReadWrite, the plaintiff says he started betting on Stake and related sites around age 13, first burning through his own savings and then, when that ran dry, using his father’s credit card without permission. The lawsuit also claims Coinbase repeatedly processed fiat-to-crypto purchases and outbound transfers that were tied to gambling, even after the platform allegedly showed an identity mismatch and a payment method labeled "Chase - HIGH SCHOOL CHECKING."
Seeger Weiss, one of the law firms representing Doe, casts the case as a challenge to what it calls a recruitment-and-payments pipeline aimed at young users. "This is a system built to recruit children and profit from their addiction," Seeger Weiss senior partner David Buchanan said in a statement on the firm’s website.
How the complaint says the pipeline worked
The lawsuit describes what it calls a three-prong strategy. First, recruitment through influencers and celebrity sponsorships on platforms like Twitch and Kick. Second, allegedly porous age and geolocation checks that allowed minors to reach Stake via VPNs and mirror sites. Third, crypto on-ramps that turned dollars into tokens and routed funds to offshore gambling wallets.
The filing reproduces screenshots, examples of streams and transaction records, and alleges that Stake leaned on paid promoters and Discord communities to help users sidestep safeguards. The detailed exhibits are laid out in the complaint published by ALM.
Legal claims and what is at stake
The complaint brings a deceptive-business-practices claim under New York’s GBL §349, negligence and gross-negligence counts against Coinbase, and an unjust-enrichment claim. It seeks treble damages where available, attorneys’ fees and injunctions that would force stronger age and identity checks, according to a press release from the plaintiff’s counsel.
The filing lands at a moment when state regulators, including Nevada’s gaming board, have already pursued enforcement actions against Coinbase over prediction markets. That separate fight has helped set the stage for how courts and regulators are wrestling with whether crypto payment systems can be treated as responsible for downstream gambling harms, according to industry coverage.
What to watch next
The case is still in its early days. When the complaint was submitted, the index number on the NYSCEF docket was unassigned, and the plaintiff demanded a jury trial. As of ReadWrite’s reporting, none of the defendants had publicly commented on the suit.
The next moves to watch are any early efforts by Stake or Coinbase to knock the case out on motions to dismiss or stay, followed by formal service of the complaint and detailed answers or motions from each of the named companies.
