Report: New Jersey Woman Sues DraftKings After Her Husband Loses $942K In Family Money
Middle-class family’s savings and children’s accounts emptied as DraftKings ignored red flags, complaint says
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A federal lawsuit has been filed by a New Jersey woman, alleging DraftKings “nurtured” her now-estranged husband into a gambling addiction that cost the family over a million dollars, according to The Independent.
Lisa D’Alessandro says her husband — who is not named in the suit outside of his DraftKings username, “Mdallo1990” — funded his $125,000-a-month habit by maxing out her credit cards and stealing from their pre-teen children’ savings accounts.
The lawsuit claims DraftKings “actively participated” in her estranged husband’s gambling addiction, leading him down a path to betting large amounts of money until he became addicted — and in the hole.
According to the suit, the husband began playing on DraftKings in 2020, and, initially, never wagered more than $3,775 in a month. But three years later, he was wagering $125K a month — on a salary of $175,000 a year.
“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. “This was a middle-class family. A lot of it remains on a credit card, and the rest of it is just gone.”
DraftKings did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent.
‘Until they bottom out’
The complaint goes on to detail how Mdallo1990 had four VIP hosts at DraftKings, and that they knew he was both married and a problem gambler, conversing with him daily via text, phone, and email.
The VIP hosts would give Mdallo1990 incentives to keep betting, from free bets and credits to gifts for, as the suit alleges, “depositing money and gambling at levels far beyond his means.”
According to the lawsuit, DraftKings employees are trained to spot signs of gambling addiction and understand that problem gamblers will use “any and all funds to which he has access to continue gambling — including and especially the funds of immediate family members.”
Yet DraftKings elevated Mdallo1990 to “Onyx Elite level status” by 2022. His VIP hosts offered him vacations, high-end Apple products, and DraftKings-branded whiskey glasses, the suit claims.
“They’re incentivized to keep them playing until they bottom out,” Litt told The Independent.
The lawsuit alleges DraftKings failed to follow its own policies by not requiring Mdallo1990 to verify his funding sources through W-2s or bank statements. The complaint claims his VIP hosts “knew that [he] would not be able to continue to deposit such large sums of money on its site if they required a verification,” because they “knew that the source of the money wagered by Mdallo1990 was illegitimate.”
The suit alleges the VIP hosts “were instructed and/or incentivized to avoid providing information on addicted gambling resources to customers who exhibited symptoms of gambling addiction.”
D’Alessandro’s lawsuit states her husband gambled nearly $15 million on DraftKings between January 2020 and January 2024, losing $942,232.32 belonging to her and their children.
She is suing DraftKings for negligence, fraud, and violations of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act, seeking recovery of the allegedly stolen funds. “Hopefully, we are able to help her,” Litt told The Independent. “It’s tough.”
This is not the first lawsuit against an online operator in New Jersey alleging that VIP hosts took advantage of a player with a gambling problem. The most high-profile such case to date pits Sam A. Antar against BetMGM — a case in which Antar, like D’Allesandro, is represented by attorney Litt.
