Looks like Drake’s legal troubles are piling up again with yet another lawsuit that goes straight for the heart of his streaming empire.
Drake finds himself entangled in a new RICO class-action lawsuit filed in Virginia, alongside streamer Adin Ross, online casino Stake, and Australian clip farmer George Nguyen. The lawsuit alleges that the defendants unlawfully utilized Stake’s platform to finance the inflation of Drake’s music streaming figures, raising serious questions about the integrity of music consumption in the digital age.
The plaintiffs aim to have Stake.us shut down, branding it an illegal online gambling operation. According to the complaint, there are serious accusations that the defendants obscured money transfers tied to music-botting initiatives. Civil penalties are also being sought against all parties involved to prevent any future misconduct.
Legal documents reveal that Drake and Nguyen allegedly funneled money through Stake’s “tipping” feature, described in the lawsuit as an “unlimited and wholly unregulated money transmitter.” This is claimed to have facilitated funding for bots that generate fraudulent streams for Drake’s music.
The lawsuit asserts that, at the core of this alleged scheme, Drake, along with his alleged co-conspirators, deployed automated bots and streaming farms to artificially inflate his play counts on major platforms like Spotify. These fake streams, the complaint argues, were designed to mislead royalty calculations, manipulate recommendation algorithms, and distort playlist rankings. This deceptive practice is said to undermine genuine artists, thus narrowing the audience’s access to authentic content and degrading the quality of curated experiences.
This latest lawsuit follows similar class-action complaints filed in Missouri and New Mexico in October against the same individuals and entities, which accused them of promoting illegal gambling practices. Just last month, Drake faced a separate copyright infringement lawsuit from an Italian photographer regarding a scene in his music video “What Did I Miss?” Additionally, although he was not named a defendant, a federal lawsuit recently cited Drake in connection with Spotify, alleging the platform overlooked widespread botting of his music.
Stake.us is also dealing with multiple lawsuits across other states, but Drake’s name does not appear in those cases. The rapper’s recent legal headaches also include a high-profile defamation suit he lost against Universal Music Group in October, regarding Kendrick Lamar’s track “Not Like Us,” a verdict he is currently seeking to appeal.