Judge Sends Drake ‘Fraudulent Streams’ Claims to Arbitration, Halting Lawsuit Over Stake Promotion

A lawsuit accusing Drake and streamer Adin Ross of using an online casino to fund bots that inflated the rapper’s streams will not move forward in court for now. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema has stayed claims against the two men, ruling that the plaintiffs must first resolve their dispute with the platform Stake through private arbitration.

The decision, issued Thursday in a 20-page opinion, hinges on the finding that the plaintiffs agreed to binding arbitration when they accessed Stake.us to play casino-style games. Judge Brinkema halted related claims against Drake (Aubrey Graham), Ross, and Australian co-defendant George Nguyen until the arbitration is complete. According to the opinion, none of the three have yet been served with the lawsuit.

The Virginia-based complaint, filed last December, alleged that Drake’s paid promotion of Stake—including live-streamed gambling—drew users into a “predatorial gambling environment” and that the platform was used to finance bot-driven stream inflation. This is not the first legal action targeting the connection. A similar proposed class action was filed in Missouri last October, and a separate complaint in California claims Spotify allowed “billions of fraudulent streams” of Drake’s music to go unchecked, allegedly diverting at least $600 million in royalties from other artists. That case, brought by rapper RBX, remains active after an earlier version was dismissed; Spotify is due to respond to an amended complaint by August 11.

The arbitration order pauses, at minimum, the public airing of claims directly naming Graham and Ross, pushing the core dispute into a private forum before any courtroom narrative can develop.