In a subreddit for teenagers, one post describes a user saving their earnings from winning at Plinko on Stake and buying their girlfriend an Abercrombie hoodie. Stake is currently being sued in Florida and New York for luring minors to gamble online. Other posts are from accounts posing as recent high school graduates helping siblings and friends. But the number of posts targeting poor and working-class people — the population at greatest risk of gambling addiction harm — is far greater than those aimed at teenagers.

A post to r/PovertyFinance — a forum dedicated to working-class people exchanging money advice and stories — reads:

Just moved into my own apartment last month and cooking for myself has been a game changer. Been surviving on cheap mac and cheese and whatever garbage frozen meals I could afford for way too long. I could finally scrape together the security and first month after I got lucky on Stake US.

Similar posts are found in antiwork forums made for workers to discuss workplace issues and abuses, forums for first-time home buyers, self-declared “frugal” people, renters, middle class finance discussions, work reform organizing, student loan borrowers, and those suffering social anxiety.

“This marketing tactic appears to be becoming more pervasive in the age of large language models and Google’s special treatment of Reddit posts in search results. Someone searching Google for information about Stake or online gambling in general may see these posts,” says Brian Pempus, founder of GamblingHarm.org, an organization he founded after working in the gambling industry for over fifteen years. “Regarding the content of these posts, they may severely harm young people who are especially vulnerable to get-rich-quick schemes in our era of decaying capitalism, where the future appears bleaker with each new generation.”

The posts often use a Cyrillic a or e when spelling “Stake” in a bid to avoid detection by AI moderators. Many of these posts — including one in which a user discusses finally being able to move out of their mother’s home — have since been deleted, often after the account itself has been deleted. Of the ones that remain online, most have hidden post histories. But many commentators appear to accept these posts as genuine, congratulating or giving advice to these ostensible teenagers, workers, or working-class people making money off of Stake.

One user, Jamie, shared the trend on gambling addiction forums to warn users after his partner first noticed some of these posts. Within one minute, however, the post received over one hundred downvotes. The volume and speed of the downvotes suggest that bots may have targeted it, potentially because of its criticism of Stake. Jamie has since moved the findings to a website he made called StakeisEvil, but hasn’t been able to match the traction that these covert Stake posts have garnered on over 330 posts across eighty-five forums.

“To be fair to Stake, it is no worse as a money-making platform than any other parasitic gambling platform that advertises itself as a way to score a life-changing windfall,” says Pempus. What Pempus is referring to is the growing ecosystem of iCasinos that operate in legal grey areas, enabled by a Trump administration that continues to cultivate ties to the digital gambling sector even as public health experts warn that safeguards have failed to keep pace. In April, three of Stake’s largest competitors — FanDuel, DraftKings, and Fanatics — launched a new PAC, “Win for America.” The companies poured $41 million into the committee as they began lobbying efforts in states including Georgia and Texas.

Because Stake is a Curaçao-based company that operates its US-facing wing from Cyprus and is not licensed in any of the eight states that currently allow online gambling (others, like Tennessee, have recently banned sweepstakes casinos like Stake entirely), it is less able to form PACs or contribute directly to US elections. “States either lack the tools or the will to do anything about advertising from unregulated platforms like Stake,” says Pempus.

Stake’s cofounder, however, is a key donor to the MAGA administration. Bijan Tehrani, based in Australia, cofounded Stake in 2017 with Ed Craven. In 2024, he donated $1,300,000 to Donald Trump, and this spring, he donated another $1 million. Tehrani is a billionaire whose fortune comes from both Stake and Kick.com, the streaming platform he cofounded as an alternative to platforms like Twitch, with lighter moderation and a strong emphasis on the livestreaming of online gambling. Viral streamers on the platform include Adin Ross (who live streamed with Trump himself last year) and Clavicular, both of whom regularly live stream themselves gambling on Stake.

President Trump, who has spoken harshly about the perils of addiction, has deepened his administration’s coziness to the gambling industry by expressing interest in entering into it himself last autumn. In October of 2025, Trump Media announced its plans to launch Truth Predict, a cryptocurrency predictive market platform.

“For too long, global elites have closely controlled these markets — with Truth Predict, we’re democratizing information and empowering everyday Americans to harness the wisdom of the crowd, turning free speech into actionable foresight,” said Devin Nunes, recently departed chairman and CEO of Trump Media (and chair of the president’s Intelligence Advisory Board), as reported by Reuters. This sentiment of anti-elitism is difficult to reconcile with evidence that poor Americans are twice as likely to suffer problem gambling habits than their wealthy counterparts, with homeless individuals being nine times more likely to suffer gambling addictions than the general population.

The flow of “Big Gambling” money toward far-right politicians — and to pro-gambling Democrats, like Nevada’s Dina Titus, who argued Trump had been too harsh on casinos — has been accompanied by massive waves of digital marketing. The industry’s pitch has been both covert and explicit, spreading through platforms like Reddit, Kick, and YouTube. These Reddit posts are deliberately casual but aspirational. Their message is simple: ordinary users have, by chance, discovered a sum of money that made their mealtimes easier and allowed them to give gifts to loved ones. As wealth gaps increase and young people feel increasingly hopeless about their economic future, the marketing is working: problem gambling continues to hit record highs among young working-class people online.

Pempus says he has witnessed the spike in gambling firsthand and its disproportionate impact on poorer communities, catalyzed by illegal and quasi-legal marketing tactics that mercilessly target the most vulnerable:

The ruthlessness of marketing tactics can vary by brand, but taken as a whole, the vast online gambling sector parasitizes on the hopes and dreams of financial stability that many people cling to. We truly live in the age of scams, and gambling is a main attraction. This is not to say that people with wealth can’t also become addicted and ruined by platforms such as Stake. But predominantly, the harm is done to people with already little wealth.

The promise being made is not one of luxury but of basic necessities. Instead of exhortations to covet Rolexes or diamonds, users are told stories about groceries bought and rent made. With economic insecurity worsening, this is a disturbingly effective siren song.