Groom-to-be sues DraftKings after gambling away wedding fund amid $2M loss

Groom-to-be sues DraftKings after gambling away wedding fund amid $2M loss Exclusive: ‘Once they put the product out there, they have an obligation to make it reasonably safe,’ attorney Yvonne Flaherty told The Independent of client Dane Miller, who also lost his job and considered suicide in the aftermath - Bookmark A 32-year-old groom-to-be is suing DraftKings after blowing more than $2 million on losing wagers – draining his wedding fund, losing his job and considering suicide before finally getting help, according to court filings reviewed by The Independent. In a complaint filed June 24 in Chicago federal court, Illinois resident Dane Miller, who opened his DraftKings account in 2020, accuses the online sportsbook of ignoring obvious signs he had a gambling problem and instead accelerated his addiction by eliminating safeguards while disingenuously “touting a commitment to ‘responsible gaming.’” “DraftKings quickly realized the potential in Miller and crowned him as a VIP in May 2021,” Miller’s complaint contends. “As a VIP, DraftKings showered Miller with many lucrative ‘perks’ including but not limited to promotions, profit boosts, free bets, DK cash, deposit matches and tickets to professional sporting events.” His casual play rapidly escalated, and Miller soon lost control, the complaint states. After gambling away his wedding savings, Miller’s VIP host – who allegedly contacted him daily – offered him two tickets to a suite at Soldier Field as a reward for his “loyalty,” the complaint goes on. To fund his spiraling habit, Miller took out credit card advances, personal loans, and dipped into his 401(k) for cash, the complaint says. In September 2024, Miller lost his job once his employer realized his constant betting was an issue, but declined his father’s pleas to get help, the complaint continues. The following month, at “the pinnacle of his addiction,” Miller drafted a suicide note and was hospitalized with severe suicidal ideation, according to the complaint. Remarkably, just two weeks earlier, the complaint claims DraftKings had sent Miller five separate $200 sportsbook credits to lure him back. When Miller was discharged on November 5, 2024, he almost immediately relapsed and reinstalled the DraftKings app on his phone, according to the complaint. It says Miller was then admitted into an intensive outpatient treatment program, which he successfully completed that December, and, four days before Christmas, put his name on Illinois’ self-exclusion list, proactively barring himself from placing a bet anywhere in the state. DraftKings, the complaint asserts, employs “personalized algorithms [that] reinforce illusions of control, buttress loss aversion, and encourage the user to chase their losses.” The platform further “anticipates a user’s exact moment of ‘emotional vulnerability,’ according to the complaint, and “provides ‘personalized stimuli’ precisely timed to maintain engagement.” “This results in users overestimating their skill and the probability of winning,” the complaint alleges, “which leads to increased engagement and a continual loop of chasing losses… a hallmark of the transition from recreational to disordered gambling.” Attorney Yvonne Flaherty, who is part of the legal team representing Miller, who is in the financial industry, told The Independent that he has since married and has a young child. “He’s in recovery, and has been now for many months,” Flaherty said. “He’s working on his family, he has regained employment, but all of those things took time to repair. It’s an ongoing process.” Gambling addiction is one of the disorders with the highest rates of suicidal ideation, according to Flaherty, who said that while it’s “impossible to watch any type of sporting event and not hear something about DraftKings or a similar platform,” the stigma attached to compulsive gambling tends to “prevent or slow down the process of recovery for some individuals.” Online sportsbooks are now legal in 30 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Studies have found an associated rise in problem gambling, and say legalized sports betting drains household finances faster than other types of betting. Unlike physical casinos, where staff are trained to look for behavioral markers of problem gambling, like depositing over $10,000 in 24 hours, or repeatedly visiting self-exclusion pages without taking any action, Miller’s complaint claims that DraftKings “defectively designed its product to take advantage of the chemical reward system of users’ brains (especially young users) to create addictive engagement, compulsive use, and additional mental and physical harms.” DraftKings, according to the complaint, held gambling licenses in Austria, Germany, Ireland, Malta and the U.K.. But, it says, since European regulators restrict platforms’ use of algorithms and personal consumer data, DraftKings abandoned those territories to focus solely on the more permissive U.S. market, where it has unleashed a “disaster” for people like Miller. In 2024, a federal lawsuit accused DraftKings of having “nurtured” a New Jersey father’s gambling addiction, via the same techniques Miller’s complaint describes, leading him to lose nearly $1 million he siphoned from his wife and two kids. The complaint by Lisa D’Alessandro said her estranged husband maxed out her credit cards and drained their young children's savings accounts, which contained gifts they had received for Christmas, birthdays and their baptisms. When he established his account, the husband, who was identified in court filings only by his DraftKings username, “Mdallo1990,” never gambled more than $3,775 in a single month, according to D’Alessandro’s complaint. However, it said, by 2023, Mdallo1990 was betting as much as $125,000 a month. “You think you’re building a nest egg for yourself and your family, and it turns out it’s gone,” D’Alessandro’s attorney, Matthew Litt, told The Independent at the time. “This was a middle-class family. A lot of it remains on a credit card, and the rest of it is just gone.” Miller’s complaint claims, “has sustained, and continues to sustain, significant physical injury and economic harm as a result of DraftKings’ defective product.” His injuries, which the complaint claims are “permanent and ongoing,” have “required and will require more healthcare and services and did incur medical, health, incidental and related expenses.” At the same time, DraftKings has been “unjustly enriched and have inappropriately retained that enrichment to this day.” Flaherty told The Independent that online gambling has removed barriers and increases anonymity, allowing people to bet whether they are “in class, at work, in bed, in the bathroom, at church, in their car – as long as they’re in a state that allows for this, they’re able to gamble.” Miller, she said, doesn’t want others to endure what he has experienced. “He’d like to see some changes in how DraftKings manages their product, but what really is at issue is increasing awareness,” Flaherty said. “There are illusions of self-control with these products, what we call ‘the game behind the game.’ They collect massive amounts of data, examining a user’s every move, and they use that to create this product that is designed to keep people engaged for as long as possible. The science indicates that increases the likelihood of addiction.” “Our position is that once they put the product out there, they have an obligation to make it reasonably safe,” she said. Because Illinois law forbids online sportsbooks from operating without a brick-and-mortar partner, Miller’s suit names Casino Queen, Inc. a local riverboat casino run by the Bally’s Corporation – which is owned by New York-based hedge fund Standard General L.P. – as co-defendants. Miller is now seeking treble compensatory, exemplary, and punitive damages from the three companies, to be determined by a jury, for medical expenses; pain and suffering; mental anguish, anxiety, and discomfort; loss of enjoyment of life; emotional distress; lost earnings; and loss of earning capacity, plus interest, as well as attorneys’ fees and court costs. DraftKings did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.