MGM Resorts International Denies Wrongdoing in Lawsuit Filed by Fraudster Accusing Company of Preying on Gambling Addiction
What to Know
- MGM Resorts International denies allegations made by Sam Antar, a twice-jailed “fraudster” who accuses the company of preying on his gambling addiction with repeated cash bonuses intended to keep him gambling.
- MGM is asking a federal judge to dismiss Antar’s lawsuit and refer the matter to arbitration, which it says is required by the terms of service to which Antar agreed when he opened an online gambling account with the company.
- The company also denies it violated any New Jersey laws.
Gambling giant MGM Resorts International has responded to a lawsuit filed by Sam Antar, a twice-jailed “fraudster” who accuses the company of preying on his gambling addiction with repeated cash bonuses intended to keep him gambling. In court papers, MGM denies any wrongdoing and accuses Antar of falsely accusing the company as part of “his latest scheme.”
The Details
MGM is asking a federal judge to dismiss Antar’s lawsuit and refer the matter to arbitration, which it says is required by the terms of service to which Antar agreed when he opened an online gambling account with the company. The company also denies it violated any New Jersey laws.
Antar is the nephew of Eddie Antar, who founded the Crazy Eddie electronics stores in the 1970s and 1980s. Eddie Antar defrauded investors out of more than $74 million and died in 2016. Sam Antar has been convicted and jailed multiple times for fraud and theft by deception.
Antar’s initial lawsuit, filed last September, accused MGM of plying him with bonus cash to dissuade him from reporting to New Jersey gambling regulators numerous instances in which he was gambling online and was disconnected from the system — often when he had a winning hand. His revised lawsuit, filed in May, drops those allegations and focuses on what his lawyer Matthew Litt calls “what’s really important here to society as a whole: the enticement by the casino of a person who was showing signs of being a problem gambler.”
Antar, who has homes in New York and in Long Branch, New Jersey, gambled $30 million over 100,000 bets during nine months in 2019, according to his lawsuit, which does not specify how much he actually lost. Litt would not estimate those losses, although a previous lawyer in Antar’s case said they totaled “easily hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
In its response, MGM says it did not create or worsen a gambling problem in Antar or anyone else. The company takes problem gambling seriously and has numerous options for persons to self-exclude or limit their play, as well as resources for assistance. However, New Jersey law does not include a common law duty to protect problem gamblers from their actions. Despite a heightened sensitivity to problem gaming, New Jersey courts have repeatedly held that casinos have no common law duty to prevent alleged ‘compulsive gamblers’ from gambling, MGM wrote.
The latest version of Antar’s lawsuit makes some of the same claims that were raised — and rejected by a judge — in another person’s lawsuit targeting Atlantic City casinos. In 2008, a federal judge ruled against New York gambler Arelia Taveras who sued seven casinos that she said had a duty to stop her from gambling. She lost nearly $1 million over two years, including dayslong gambling binges.
MGM cites that case among its numerous defenses to Antar’s litigation.
Conclusion
MGM Resorts International has denied any wrongdoing in a lawsuit filed by Sam Antar, a twice-jailed “fraudster” who accuses the company of preying on his gambling addiction with repeated cash bonuses intended to keep him gambling. The company is asking a federal judge to dismiss Antar’s lawsuit and refer the matter to arbitration, which it says is required by the terms of service to which Antar agreed when he opened an online gambling account with the company. The company also denies it violated any New Jersey laws.
