Drake has been accused of streaming manipulation in a new lawsuit with the online casino and sports betting company Stake.
In a lawsuit filed in Virginia on December 31 on behalf of LaShawnna Ridley and Tiffany Hines, accusses the 39-year-old rapper, along with streamer Adin Ross and a man named George Nguyen, of promoting an illegal online casino and using the money to artificially inflate music streams.
Stake, which says it uses a virtual currency instead of real money, deceived users and regulators and is participating in illegal gambling, according to the filing. The suit also claims that Drake (whose name is Aubrey Drake Graham), Ross, and Nguyen directly transferred money to themselves “outside the oversight of any financial regulator” using Stake’s tipping feature.
The accusation of streaming inflation, which has been tied to the rapper previously, comes up in the claim, alleging that the money Drake earns from Stake is being used to “create fraudulent streams of Drake’s music; fabricate popularity; disparage competitors and music label executives; distort recommendation algorithms; and distribute financing for all of the foregoing, while concealing the flow of funds.”
“At the heart of the scheme, Drake — acting directly and through willing and knowledgeable co-conspirators — has deployed automated bots and streaming farms to artificially inflate play counts of his music across major platforms, such as Spotify, the lawsuit says.
Other suits have come up for Drake, accusing him of benefitting from streaming manipulation. A similar case, a class action suit in Missouri, alleges that the “Nokia” rapper, along with Stake, Ross, and Nguyen, promoted Stake to teenagers using influencer marketing and for engaging in livestreams on the platform under false pretenses, not actually using their own money to gamble despite saying so. And another class action lawsuit against Spotify from November 2025 also claims that Drake is getting billions of fake streams on the platform.
Drake is also currently involved in a streaming manipulation lawsuit where he is the plaintiff. After an intense rap beef between himself and Kendrick Lamar in 2024, Drake accused his own label (that he shares with Lamar under different divisions), Universal Music Group, and Spotify of conspiring to artificially inflate the streaming numbers for Lamar. “Not Like Us,” Lamar’s Grammy-winning diss where he called Drake a “pedophile,” broke the Billboard record for weeks spent at number one on the Hot Rap Songs chart, and Spotify reported that it surpassed a billion streams in January 2025.
The lawsuit was also over defamation for the lyrics of “Not Like Us,” Drake claiming that the song was damaging to his reputation. A judge dismissed the case in October 2025, but the Canadian rapper appealed it in November. Proceedings are set to continue this month.
