How to Spot Scam Sweepstakes Casinos: Protect Your Money in 2025
For better or worse, 2024 was the year of the online sweepstakes casino. But when is it safe to play with these new types of casino game operators, and when should you stay away? Below, we will talk about how to spot sweepstakes casino scams.
People should be wary of handing out too much info to online sweepstake operators. © John Shnobrich, Unsplash
A New Way of Playing Slots Sweeps the Country
A few short years ago, if you had asked someone about playing the sweeps, they would have probably thought you meant Publishers Clearing House or the McDonald Monopoly game. But in 2025, sweeps, especially casinos, have a new meaning.
A sweeps casino uses rules set up to authorize companies and their marketing departments to offer prizes and games to customers in return for buying a product. In most of these states, you don’t even have to purchase the product; instead, you can opt to send in a handwritten postcard or the like to be eligible to participate.
For many decades, companies like McDonald’s have awarded prizes and promotions to customers in order to engender loyalty and goodwill. But in roughly 2005, someone had the clever idea of selling low-cost items like phone card minutes and offering prizes in return.
But unlike past sweeps contests, these seem aimed more at gambling than engaging customer loyalty. They soon evolved into actual slot-like devices that would pay prizes or more chances. Federal law defines gambling under three attributes – consideration, prize and chance.
The many sweepstakes-style slot parlors that quickly cropped up in mostly southern states would spend the next decade exhausting every legal avenue, arguing that these games didn’t meet the definition of gambling under one or another of these attributes.
By 2015, some of these cases had reached State Supreme courts in states like Alabama, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, where they were dealt serious legal setbacks and, for the most part, considered gambling.
While some of the industry would morph into the “skill game”, grey market slots were still found in many convenience stores in Georgia, North Carolina, and up into Pennsylvania. Others took a different tact and went into the online sweepstakes casino business.
How Sweeps Casinos Work
When you log in to a sweepstakes or social casino, you will see hundreds of slot machines that look just like what you would find in a land-based or online casino. And you will quickly discover that in order to play these games, you need to bet gold coins.
Generally, you will be eligible for so many gold coins every day for free, and after you play through those, you will need to buy more gold coins should you wish to continue playing. If you purchase one of these gold coin packs, you will find that you receive “sweeps coins.” These are the same as our old sweep entries from the sweepstakes parlors of the early 2000s.
You can play that sweep coin in a slot machine to win more sweep coins, just like on a regular slot. More interestingly, you can trade in that currency for real money once you have amassed a certain amount. In this way, if you wish to gamble, you can continue to purchase gold coins, get sweeps coins, and play just like you were in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.
Some of these new online sweeps casinos even allow you to play blackjack, roulette, or other table games. In the past year or two, some have begun offering live dealer games, where you can play table games with actual real-life dealers live-streamed from a studio.
Are These Sweeps Casinos Legal?
The top sweepstakes casinos in the country rake in hundreds of millions of dollars from players across the country, with a combined market that is expected to grow to $6.9 billion by the end of this year. That is a huge market for companies, and no one can decide whether they are legal.
VGW, which owns some of the busiest sweeps casinos like Chumba Land and Luckyland Slots, has faced numerous class action suits in the past few months of 2024; in fact, there are at least a dozen federal lawsuits pending, but they are likely to take years to wind through the courts.
In some states, notably Georgia, some courts have already dismissed these cases, citing a lack of jurisdiction tied to no apparent transacting of business in the state and no evidence of direct solicitation or advertising for Georgia customers.
What is evident is that no answer on legality will likely arrive anytime soon, which means the number and visibility of these sweeps operators will likely increase over the coming year.
The issue is that both legitimate operators who wish to operate sweeps casinos much like a casino and fake sweepstakes operators who are simply out to make a quick buck on the back of a hot new trend are likely soliciting your sweeps business.
How to Spot Sweepstakes Casino Scams
The best real money casinos you can play online are only legal in seven states, so if you were to be interested in playing some sweeps casino slots, you would be in the company of tens of millions of other Americans. However, how can you do it safely and avoid all the sweepstakes scams that are starting to pop up?
When we think about fake sweepstakes operators, we probably think about sites that are simply going to take our money and run. But in fact, even the large sweeps operators that have been in business for four or five years do some pretty shady stuff, even though they have millions of customers.
Redemption Red Flags
One of the worst scams of even seasoned operators is the cash-out. Many of these casinos will require that you have at least $100 in your account before you can request a check or gift card. Sometimes, this also involves a certain amount of play-through of not only any bonuses given but sometimes just your initial award of sweeps coins given for buying gold coins.
Ensure you understand the terms and conditions, especially how much you will need before they begin a redemption of your sweeps coins. Also, keep an eye out for any unusual play-through requirements.
These can also force you to play much longer or for higher stakes than you intended. Any casino that calls this process a withdrawal or refers to your purchase of gold coins as a deposit should also be considered either plain unknowledgeable or shady at worst.
Lack of RTP Information
Even a well-known and recognized site may be using game mechanics on their “slots” that pay back 80% or even less. Most real-world casinos and even legal online ones pay back around 88% to 98%.
Sweepstake fraud could be rampant when they don’t disclose this Return to Player (RTP) number. Try to always look for casinos that disclose this info at least in broad strokes if not game by game.
Also, it is best to look for sweeps casino sites that have been certified by gaming lab companies like eCOGRA or GLI that check to make sure that the software they are using is fair and behaves as it is supposed to. You can generally find seals from these companies advertised on the casinos’ home page.
Information Is Power
Not all sweepstakes scams revolve around stealing your money or cheating you at the slots. Some are as simple as getting you to download an app from outside the Apple or Google App Store.
These apps could leak not only your private information but also your bank logins and other hugely damaging information about your financial health. Never download an app from outside the monitored and secured environs of the major app stores.
But even that aside, fraudulent casinos may ask for bank info to send your redemption or place undelatable cookies on your computer when you log in to play your favorite games.
Look for well-written info on how your information will be kept private and what steps are taken to make sure that even if the casino is operating above board, nefarious actors on the Internet are unlikely to be able to breach their security.
Not Afraid to Tell You About Themselves
If you google an online sweeps casino and get no hits, that is a sign of a fake sweepstakes site. If you go to Trust Pilot, and not one person has ever mentioned this casino, good or bad, that is a bad sign.
Maybe even as bad a sign as dozens of one-star reviews about unfair games. Sweep casinos deal with thousands or more customers, so there should be a digital footprint of their behavior. Look for it and make up your own mind.
Even better, their site’s About or Info page should list their certifications, detail their security and privacy policies, and tell you where they are licensed and how long they’ve been in business. A company with nothing to hide will be upfront about themselves.
Self Imposed Rules to Operate By
While VGW has not yet joined, a group of ten other large sweeps operators formed a trade group. It set up standards and protocols that it believes all legitimate sweeps operators should agree to after the American Gaming Association in August more or less declared open season on sweeps casinos.
Realizing the increased scrutiny that the AGA would bring on operations, these forward-thinking companies decided they should consider minimum procedures and rules to gain the public trust.
So far, these are heavily aimed at age verification to ensure underage players are not slipping in. Geo-location is also included to ensure that players from those few states that prohibit sweepstakes casinos, like Washington, Idaho, and Montana don’t allow players to enter. Furthermore, all member casinos should comply closely with Federal Money Laundering and Know Your Customer laws.
These so-called pillars announced by the Social and Promotional Gaming Association (SPGA) make perfect sense in that violating any of these rules could cause an uproar that would ensure that sweeps are more closely regulated. They promise to add new members and enact tougher rules and regulations as 2025 progresses.
In any case, looking for the SPGA seal may at least let you know that the casino is not an out-and-out fraudulent sweepstakes operator, nor is it likely involved in out-and-out sweepstakes fraud.
Conclusion
Many sweeps casino operators are simply trying to run a casino-like website within what they perceive to be a grey area of the law. More than 80% of sweeps casino players never wager a single sweeps coin and are content to play their gold coins for free on slots that bring them joy.
However, a small minority of fake sweepstake casinos do exist. And more are certainly on their way. Pay close attention to the terms and conditions as well as do a lot of research on what other players are saying. Watch out for the warning signs of possible scams, and remember, even though it is 2025, the Internet is still like the Wild West out there, so let the player beware.
