Stake.com creators Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, who just bought the most expensive house in Melbourne, called the lawsuit “completely frivolous” and “probably false.”
A former Stake.com partner who claims he was shut out of the blockbuster venture is suing the Australian creators of the world’s largest Bitcoin casino in the US for $400 million in damages. However, the creators of Stake.com, Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, who have just bought the most expensive house in Melbourne, called the lawsuit “totally frivolous” and “probably false.”
Stake.com: a $1 Billion Operation
Thought to be an offshore operation, crypto casino Stake.com was actually formed in Melbourne in 2017 by Craven and Tehrani, according to a late 2021 investigation by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. With Canadian pop artist Drake as its main brand ambassador, Stake.com, the main shirt sponsor of the English Premier League football team Everton, has become a company with a potential market value of up to 1 billion dollars.
Craven recently made headlines in Australia when he paid $80 million for a Toorak house, breaking the town’s previous record. Other Toorak properties were purchased for $38 million earlier this year by entities connected to Craven.
Christopher Freeman, who currently resides in Florida, filed a civil lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, claiming he was tricked into not participating in the creation of Stake.com and is seeking $400 million ($580 million) in punitive action damages, as well as the payment of his initial investment in a company that served as a precursor to Stake.com.
The casino claims to have processed US$100 billion worth of bets across its casino and sportsbook companies, but it works much like a typical casino and only accepts cryptocurrencies as payment. Freeman claims in his court case that he went to elementary and high school in Connecticut with Tehrani and that he was friends with the founder of Stake.com since they were young children.
Event Breakdown
Initially, according to Freeman, he owned 20% of Primedice, while Tehrani and Craven each owned 40%, reflecting their early investment in the company. Within nine months of founding Primedice, Freeman claims his shares were reduced to 14% to compensate other key members of the development team.
Freeman claims that despite the trio’s agreement that Primedice would only grant shares to people who have invested money in the company, this share transfer went through. As the value of cryptocurrencies rose, Freeman claims that in 2016 he discussed the concept of a crypto casino with his business partners, but Tehrani and Craven reportedly turned it down due to potential regulatory concerns.
Freeman claims he was put off joining Tehrani and Craven’s claimed new company, Stake.com, in the same year after being told he could only participate if he moved to Australia and that the new business would only deal in fiat currencies, like the US dollar, or the euro.
According to court documents, “Freeman, who was committed to and comfortable with the concepts of online gambling, believed that a fiat casino was the wrong thing to do (fiat-facilitated online gaming is a big deal).”
Stake.com said in a statement that: “the complaint filed by Chris Freeman contains allegations that are internally inconsistent, intentionally misleading and demonstratievely false.”
The company described the claim as a “desperate attempt to spread false information,” adding that Freeman was not entitled to the money he said he was owed.
By Audy Castaneda
