Posted on: December 8, 2024, 06:24h.
Last updated on: December 8, 2024, 06:24h.
The estranged wife of a New Jersey dad who lost nearly $1 million of the family’s money gambling at DraftKings wants revenge.
In a lawsuit filed in the New Jersey state court, Lisa D’Alessandro claims her husband stole from her and their two children to support his gambling. She also alleges that DraftKings “nurtured” his addiction and encouraged it to spiral out of control.
The husband, referred to only in court documents by his DraftKings username, “Mdallo1990,” gambled nearly $15 million on the platform between 2020 and January 2024. Mdallo1990 plundered credit cards and the children’s saving accounts, which had been funded by gifts received at Christmas, birthdays, and their baptisms.
Problem Snowballs
In the first year he played at DraftKings, Mdallo1990 never gambled more than $3,775 in a single month. By 2023, that had ballooned to $125,000 a month, more than 70 percent of his annual income, the complaint states.
The plaintiff claims Mdallo1990 “actively participated” in exacerbating her husband’s gambling problem, encouraging him to wager “exponentially higher amounts” until there was nothing left, the lawsuit states.
The suit alleges DraftKings mines user data to identify the most potentially lucrative customers. On the basis of this, the sportsbook targeted Mdello1990 and invited him to join its “VIP Private Group.”
A team of VIP hosts was assigned to the bettor to “extract as much money” from him as they could, per the complaint.
These hosts plied Mdallo1990 with incentives such as free bets and credits to cover his losses, as well as “gifts and trophies” for betting beyond his means, the plaintiff claims.
By 2022, he had been upgraded to “Onyx Elite level status,” and was rewarded for his play with a free vacation and a “suite of high-end Apple products,” among other merchandise, per the suit.
‘Due Diligence Failure’
Mdallo1990’s VIP hosts should have known he was a problem gambler who was married with children because they spoke with him almost every day, the lawsuit states. Moreover, DraftKings staff are trained to recognize signs of problem gambling but failed to do their due diligence on the player, per the suit.
Under anti-money laundering directives, DraftKings staff are also required to ask high rollers to verify the sources of their funds but failed to follow this policy in respect to Mdallo1990, the plaintiff claims.
The VIP agents failed to demand bank or tax statements from their protégé because they “knew that [he] would not be able to continue to deposit such large sums of money on its site if they required a verification.” That’s because they “knew that the source of the money wagered by Mdallo1990 was illegitimate,” the lawsuit claims.
Duty of Care?
The case has echoes of a federal suit brought by problem gambler Sam A. Antar last year against BetMGM, also in New Jersey.
Antar, who was sentenced to three years in prison in 2022 after pleading guilty to stealing $794,000 for gambling, sued BetMGM for negligence and unjust enrichment for offering him continued “inducements to gamble.”
The judge in that case ruled that New Jersey’s Casino Control Act “does not require casinos to prevent or stop inducing gambling from those that exhibit problem gambling behavior.” She also determined that “the casino owed plaintiff no negligence common law duty of care.”
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