In a complaint filed June 24 in Chicago federal court, Illinois resident Dane Miller, who opened his DraftKings<\/a> 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 \u201ctouting a commitment to \u2018responsible gaming.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDraftKings quickly realized the potential in Miller and crowned him as a VIP in May 2021,\u201d Miller\u2019s complaint contends. \u201cAs a VIP, DraftKings showered Miller with many lucrative \u2018perks\u2019 including but not limited to promotions, profit boosts, free bets, DK cash, deposit matches and tickets to professional sporting events.\u201d<\/p>\n His casual play rapidly escalated, and Miller soon lost control, the complaint states. After gambling away his wedding savings, Miller\u2019s VIP host \u2013 who allegedly contacted him daily \u2013 offered him two tickets to a suite at Soldier Field<\/a> as a reward for his \u201cloyalty,\u201d 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. <\/p>\n In September 2024, Miller lost his job once his employer realized his constant betting was an issue, but declined his father\u2019s pleas to get help, the complaint continues.<\/p>\n The following month, at \u201cthe pinnacle of his addiction,\u201d 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<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n 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\u2019 self-exclusion list<\/a>, proactively barring himself from placing a bet anywhere in the state.<\/p>\n DraftKings, the complaint<\/a> asserts, employs \u201cpersonalized algorithms [that] reinforce illusions of control, buttress loss aversion, and encourage the user to chase their losses.\u201d The platform further \u201canticipates a user\u2019s exact moment of \u2018emotional vulnerability,\u2019 according to the complaint, and \u201cprovides \u2018personalized stimuli\u2019 precisely timed to maintain engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis results in users overestimating their skill and the probability of winning,\u201d the complaint alleges, \u201cwhich leads to increased engagement and a continual loop of chasing losses\u2026 a hallmark of the transition from recreational to disordered gambling.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s in recovery, and has been now for many months,\u201d Flaherty said. \u201cHe\u2019s working on his family, he has regained employment, but all of those things took time to repair. It\u2019s an ongoing process.\u201d<\/p>\n Gambling addiction is one of the disorders with the highest rates of suicidal ideation, according to Flaherty, who said that while it\u2019s \u201cimpossible to watch any type of sporting event and not hear something about DraftKings or a similar platform,\u201d the stigma attached to compulsive gambling tends to \u201cprevent or slow down the process of recovery for some individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n Online sportsbooks are now legal in 30 states<\/a>, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Studies have found an associated rise<\/a> in problem gambling, and say legalized sports betting drains household finances<\/a> faster than other types of betting.<\/p>\n Unlike physical casinos, where staff are trained to look for behavioral markers of problem gambling<\/a>, like depositing over $10,000 in 24 hours, or repeatedly visiting self-exclusion pages without taking any action, Miller\u2019s complaint claims that DraftKings \u201cdefectively designed its product to take advantage of the chemical reward system of users\u2019 brains (especially young users) to create addictive engagement, compulsive use, and additional mental and physical harms.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019 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 \u201cdisaster\u201d for people like Miller.<\/p>\n In 2024, a federal lawsuit accused DraftKings of having<\/a> \u201cnurtured\u201d a New Jersey father\u2019s gambling addiction, via the same techniques Miller\u2019s complaint describes, leading him to lose nearly $1 million he siphoned from his wife and two kids. The complaint by Lisa D\u2019Alessandro 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.<\/p>\n When he established his account, the husband, who was identified in court filings only by his DraftKings<\/a> username, \u201cMdallo1990,\u201d never gambled more than $3,775 in a single month, according to D\u2019Alessandro\u2019s complaint. However, it said, by 2023, Mdallo1990 was betting as much as $125,000 a month.<\/p>\n \u201cYou think you\u2019re building a nest egg for yourself and your family, and it turns out it\u2019s gone,\u201d D\u2019Alessandro\u2019s attorney, Matthew Litt, told The Independent at the time. \u201cThis was a middle-class family. A lot of it remains on a credit card, and the rest of it is just gone.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s complaint claims, \u201chas sustained, and continues to sustain, significant physical injury and economic harm as a result of DraftKings\u2019 defective product.\u201d<\/p>\n His injuries, which the complaint claims are \u201cpermanent and ongoing,\u201d have \u201crequired and will require more healthcare and services and did incur medical, health, incidental and related expenses.\u201d At the same time, DraftKings has been \u201cunjustly enriched and have inappropriately retained that enrichment to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n Flaherty told The Independent that online gambling has removed barriers and increases anonymity, allowing people to bet whether they are \u201cin class, at work, in bed, in the bathroom, at church, in their car \u2013 as long as they\u2019re in a state that allows for this, they\u2019re able to gamble.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller, she said, doesn\u2019t want others to endure what he has experienced.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019d like to see some changes in how DraftKings manages their product, but what really is at issue is increasing awareness,\u201d Flaherty said. \u201cThere are illusions of self-control with these products, what we call \u2018the game behind the game.\u2019 They collect massive amounts of data, examining a user\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur position is that once they put the product out there, they have an obligation to make it reasonably safe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Because Illinois<\/a> law forbids online sportsbooks from operating without a brick-and-mortar partner, Miller\u2019s suit names Casino Queen, Inc. a local riverboat casino run by the Bally\u2019s Corporation <\/a>\u2013 which is owned by New York-based hedge fund Standard General L.P. \u2013 as co-defendants.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 fees and court costs. <\/p>\n DraftKings did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[163,85,46,522,523],"class_list":["post-512142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-492972824.jpeg\")
An Illinois man claims his life was ruined by the DraftKings sports betting app (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Dane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-25-at-1-47-03-PM.png\")
Dane Miller’s lawsuit names DraftKings and Casino Queen Inc., the online sportsbook’s brick-and-mortar partner in Illinois, as defendants. The 32-year-old claims the site used underhanded tactics to manipulate him into blowing through more than $2 million (Google Maps)<\/p>\n![\"DraftKings](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2214686183.jpeg\")
DraftKings has faced multiple lawsuits from gamblers who claim they were coerced into massive losses by manipulative tactics by the online sportsbook (Getty)<\/p>\n