A New Jersey lawsuit has accused Google and Apple of facilitating payments for illegal gambling, namely a group of companies branded as ‘sweepstakes casinos’.
Google Pay and Apple Pay have been included in the lawsuit, which also names the online sweepstake casino operators High 5 Casino, McLuck, Wow Vegas and CrownCoins Casino.
The suit has been lodged by Julian Bargo, a New Jersey resident, who claims that he lost $1,000 gambling on the abovementioned sites, which he asserts constitute an illegal gambling operation.
The charges against Apple Pay and Google Pay allege that the companies ‘willingly assist, promote and profit from this illegal scheme’ by allowing users to download the gaming apps via the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Google and Apple are further accused of processing illicit transactions between consumers and defendants via the two companies’ respective payments systems.
Sweepstakes casinos are a form of online social casinos where instead of playing directly with cash, gamers purchase coins or games which are then used to play slots and traditional casino table games like blackjack and roulette.
Many social casinos are not licensed by state gambling regulators, unlike prominent online sportsbooks and mainstream casino platforms like FanDuel and DraftKings. The suit alleges that by providing a means for customers to pay for tokens on these sites, Google and Apple Pay are facilitating and profiting from illegal gambling.
Bargo has cited the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act in his lawsuit, which will keep the case in civil court and prevent it from being sent to arbitration, which often occurs with cases of this nature.
RICO is a US Act of Congress passed in the 1980s with the primary goal of being used to take on organised crime. The Act is still mainly used for legal cases against large criminal organisations, but Bargo’s complaint argues that the Act can be applied in his case against the sweepstake casinos and payments partners.
The Act defines organised crime as “any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity’.
Bargo argues that as Google Pay and Apple Pay take a percentage from the revenue generated by apps available for download in their stores and play a role in processing payments for said apps, the companies are in effect in on the criminal activities of the social casino platforms mentioned in the suit.
The suit read: “The sweepstakes casino enterprise is an association-in-fact composed of the App Defendants and the Gaming Defendants who are engaged in, and whose activities affect, interstate commerce, and which have affected and damaged interstate commercial activity.
“This enterprise exists separately from the otherwise legitimate businesses operations of each individual participant.”
This is not the first time payments providers have been named in a lawsuit against social casinos, with a suit against VGW in Florida naming Worldpay as a co-defendant. It is, however, the first time Google Pay and Apple Pay have been named in one.
