New York’s $8m VGW Deal: Who Can Still Redeem Sweeps Coins
Eight million dollars. New York’s Attorney General announced the figure on 9 September 2026, and the company paying it is VGW. You may not know the name. You’ll know Chumba Casino, which it runs, along with LuckyLand Slots and Global Poker. Paragraph 18 of the signed agreement holds the only part that puts money back in a player’s hands. It gives some former New York customers one year to redeem the Sweeps Coins they were holding when VGW switched the state off.
Some, not all. The Attorney General’s press release never mentions the window. The agreement limits it to players VGW did not tell about the shutdown, then hands the question of which coins count back to VGW’s own rulebook. We read the agreement in full and set it beside Chumba’s own published terms. It is a narrow door.
At a glance
- The settlementAssurance of Discontinuance No. 26-052, effective 31 August 2026; $8m paid to the State of New York
- Who can claimNew York residents VGW did not notify of the phase-out, for coins held on 2 June 2025
- DeadlineOne year from the effective date
- Bottom lineWhich coins qualify is decided by VGW’s own sweepstakes rules, which the agreement leaves in place
What New York and VGW actually signed
The document is an Assurance of Discontinuance, the tool New York’s Attorney General uses to close an investigation without going to court, and it names four VGW companies.
The findings go straight at the idea that Sweeps Coins were free. VGW sold Gold Coin packages with Sweeps Coins attached, and the agreement gives the arithmetic. Pay $5 and you received 5.05 Sweeps Coins. Pay $50 and you received 51.50. Roughly a coin per dollar, with only the Sweeps Coins redeemable for cash. There was a no-purchase route too, by handwritten postcard, five coins a time.
VGW neither admits nor denies any of that, and has agreed not to deny it publicly. It pays $8 million to the State within fourteen days, a single sum covering disgorgement, restitution, penalties and costs. The agreement does not split that figure between the four headings, and it describes no route by which any share of it reaches an individual player. The redemption window is separate, and what it pays out is a player’s own balance, not compensation.
The redemption window, and who it leaves out
New York’s warning letter went to VGW on 25 April 2025. VGW stopped offering Sweeps Coins to New York residents on 2 June 2025. According to the agreement, VGW told the Attorney General it had notified its New York customers of the phase-out and given them until 1 August 2025 to redeem. Two months.
Then comes paragraph 18. For a year from the effective date, New Yorkers “who did not previously receive a notification” can ask VGW to redeem whatever Sweeps Coins were in their account on 2 June 2025. Read the quoted phrase twice, because the whole window hangs on it. A player who got the notice, meant to deal with it and missed the August deadline is outside the window entirely.
The notification itself is recorded as something VGW told the Attorney General, not as a fact her office checked and found. The agreement does not say how a player shows they were never told, or who decides if VGW’s records say otherwise. It sets up no claim form, no postal address and no administrator. VGW must make requests possible and honour the valid ones. What makes a request valid is left unsaid.
| Your position on 2 June 2025 | Does paragraph 18 cover you? |
|---|---|
| Notified by VGW, did not redeem by 1 August 2025 | No. The window is only for players who were not notified |
| Not notified, holding 100 or more played-through Sweeps Coins | Yes, on a valid request made within the year |
| Not notified, holding fewer than 100 Sweeps Coins | Unclear. The agreement defers to VGW’s rules, and Chumba’s set a 100-coin floor |
| Not notified, but had not logged in for 60 days or more | Unclear, for the same reason. Chumba’s rules expire coins 60 days after the last login |
| Holding Gold Coins only | No. Gold Coins were never redeemable |
Where Chumba’s own rules come back in
Those two “unclear” rows come from a single clause. Paragraph 18 covers only coins that were eligible for redemption on that June date, paid at the exchange rate and on the other terms of whichever version of VGW’s sweepstakes rules applies. The agreement does not define eligibility. VGW’s rules do.
Chumba keeps its Sweeps Rules on its own site, so that is where we went. Version 8.0 was the newest one we could actually open. The date on it is 15 December 2023, which is older than we’d like. It is strict on three points. Clause 6.5 says a redemption is only processed at $100 or more, which means a balance of at least 100 eligible coins. Coins have to be played through once before they qualify, and clause 4.6 lets VGW raise that to as many as twenty times. And under clause 3.10, Sweeps Coins are valid for sixty days from your last login, then expire automatically.
So we checked it against something nearer the date. Chumba’s Terms and Conditions, version 12.0, are dated 12 February 2025, under four months before the New York switch-off. The 100-coin floor is in there as clause 8.2 and the sixty-day expiry as clause 8.22. Clause 15.1 adds that VGW may restrict or withdraw the platform in any territory at any time, and the player “will have no claims” against it for doing so.
Back in the Sweeps Rules, clause 6.2 says a participant “has no rights to Sweeps Coins that have not been redeemed”.
Read literally, a New Yorker with 40 coins in a Chumba account that day may have nothing the settlement obliges VGW to pay. The agreement never says small balances are shut out. It never says they are let in. We could not open every version in between, and LuckyLand Slots and Global Poker publish terms of their own, so check what governed your account before assuming either way.
What to do if you played from New York
Start by working out whether you were told. The agreement does not say how VGW sent its notice, only that the deadline in it was 1 August 2025. So check the email address on your account for Chumba, LuckyLand and Global Poker messages from the spring and summer of that year, spam folder included. Find one and you are in the first row of the table.
If nothing turns up, put a request to the brand’s support team in writing. Quote Assurance No. 26-052, paragraph 18, give the email address on your account, and ask for redemption of your eligible Sweeps Coin balance as it stood on 2 June 2025. Keep copies. The clock runs for one year from 31 August 2026.
The Attorney General can enforce the agreement, and her office takes complaints online or on 1-800-771-7755. Paragraph 25 also says nothing in the settlement takes away anyone’s private legal rights. Chumba’s rules send disputes to individual arbitration unless you opted out in time, so a private claim is a question for a lawyer, not for us.
Why this matters outside New York
New York now has, in a regulator’s own document, a record of what a sweepstakes shutdown looked like from the player’s side. Two months to redeem, then nothing, until a settlement fifteen months later reopened the door for a subset. Other states have passed bans of their own, which we covered in our report on the state ban wave.
None of the Chumba clauses above was specific to New York. Version 8.0 applied them in every US state and Canadian province the brand served. Under terms like those, a dormant account may have nothing left in it by the time a notice arrives, and a small one may never have been redeemable. Keep your account details current, and don’t count on a warning reaching you in time. If what you wanted from these sites was a game of bingo for money, our guide to where online bingo is legal in the US sets out the routes that remain.
