New York has reached an $8 million settlement with VGW Holdings and its affiliates over an investigation into the company’s sweepstakes-casino business, closing a probe into Chumba Casino, Global Poker and LuckyLand Slots. The agreement, announced on Sept. 9, says the company used virtual coins that could be redeemed for cash or prizes in games that simulated slots and table games.
According to the attorney general’s office, VGW began offering Chumba Casino to New Yorkers in 2012, expanded to Global Poker in 2016 and added LuckyLand Slots in 2018. The assurance of discontinuance says the sites used two kinds of virtual coins: gold coins and sweeps coins. Both could be played in the games, but only sweeps coins were eligible to be redeemed for cash or gift cards.
The settlement says VGW marketed the coins as if the sweeps currency were free, while the state said the purchase structure made them function much like casino chips. New York investigators said users could get roughly one sweeps coin for every dollar spent on the platform, and that some packages mixed sweeps coins with large quantities of gold coins. The assurance also describes a no-cost method that could yield five sweeps coins after a website code and a mailed handwritten request.
The case follows a cease-and-desist action in 2025. In April that year, the attorney general sent VGW a warning letter and later said the company stopped offering sweeps coins to New York residents on June 2, 2025. The state also banned sweepstakes casinos outright in December 2025, when Governor Kathy Hochul signed Senate Bill S5925A.
Under the agreement, VGW will pay $8 million in disgorgement, restitution, penalties and costs. The payment is due within 14 days of the agreement’s effective date, Aug. 31, 2026. VGW neither admitted nor denied the state’s findings.
The settlement also creates a redemption window for some former customers. New York consumers who still had sweeps coins in their accounts as of June 2, 2025, can submit redemption requests for one year after the effective date, and valid requests are to be paid in fiat currency at the exchange rate set by the applicable sweepstakes rules.
