Twitch Streamer Blames Gambling Addiction and Fraud on Stake.com Sponsorship

09:00
17 Feb

A TwitchTV streamer known for his generous giveaways has blamed a gambling sponsorship for his descent into a financial nightmare that saw him using funds from investors to chase his losses…

DNP3, a computer engineer and gaming content creator with 251k followers on TwitchTV, revealed how his addiction cost him everything after teaming up with cryptocurrency online gambling platform, Stake.com.

“Over the last year I got incredibly addicted to gambling. Every dollar I could find I would put into Stake in hopes of winning big. Even when the big wins did happen it wasn’t enough. Eventually I lost everything,” he tweeted.

When asked how it began he responded:

“Started with a sponsored stream and unleashed an addiction I never knew I had.”

And as many addicted gamblers find out, running out of their own money isn’t an end to the grip of the addiction, and DNP3 was no different.

As the founder of projects such as CLU Coin, Goobers NFT’s, and Gridcraft, he had access to investor funds, which he then used to continue gambling in a bid to chase his losses.

He confessed:

“Addiction made me do things I had no idea I was capable of. I’ve spent years building a brand off integrity and serving others. Addiction literally changes your mind and body. I feel so much remorse for the trust of those I’ve betrayed and will miss our friendships.”

The rise in casino-related content on Twitch, and subsequent problems, led the platform to ban unregulated sites from being showcased.

One of the highest-profile cases that led to the ban involved Abraham Jehad “ItsSliker” Mohammed, a Twitch streamer focusing on games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Valorant.

“ItsSliker” admitted to taking almost $300,000 from fans and fellow content creators to fund his gambling habit, with many extremely unhappy he wasn’t insta-banned from the platform.

Poker was among the games that avoided the ban, along with sportsbetting and fantasy sports, with the Amazon-owned site implementing the ban on slots, roulette and unlicensed dice games.

Poker has itself seen a slew of players who have suffered from an addiction to gambling, with one-time golden boy, Erik ‘E-dog’ Lindgren, the most famous.

Lindgren was a Full Tilt pro with $10million in tournament earnings to his name but went from riches to rags due to his sportsbetting addiction, eventually filing for bankruptcy.

In 2021, WPT champion Dennis Blieden was jailed for six and a half years after admitting to embezzling more than $22million from a digital marketing company.

Blieden blamed his gambling addiction, claiming:

“Being so deep in debt with no way to pay, I felt I just needed a larger bankroll and I could make everything right. My plan was to take some money, gamble, pay off my loans, then put back the original amounts I took from StyleHaul back without ever being detected.”

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