The Rapper, the Crypto Billionaire, and the Instagram Mystery: A Legal Deep Dive

January 21, 2026 — 11:48am You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more. Save this article for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is known colloquially among American lawyers as the “rocket docket” because of the speed with which cases make it to trial. But the name applied differently to a case filed there on New Year’s Eve. The explosive filing by two plaintiffs alleged that Stake, the online cryptocurrency casino co-founded in Australia by 30-year-old billionaire Ed Craven, had been used in a scheme to fund bots to inflate streaming numbers for the global megastar Drake amid his beef with fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar. Along with the big names in the lawsuit such as Drake, an overseas-based Stake parent company and controversial streamer Adin Ross (6.4 million followers on Instagram), a little-known online identity was allegedly part of the scheme. Operating under an obscene Instagram alias that references both the Ku Klux Klan and a racial slur, George Nguyen, who allegedly runs the Instagram meme pages called “grandwizardchatn---a” and “grandavious” is, according to the lawsuit, an Australian national. Advertisement From a modest home in the Western Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, Nguyen has become a confidant to Drake, and an online footsoldier in the artist’s incendiary public relations war with rival Lamar that has spilled into events as large as the Super Bowl. And, according to last month’s lawsuit, Nguyen also acted as a “broker and facilitator” in a scheme that allegedly violated US racketeering laws and threatens to drag the gambling empire built by one of Australia’s most successful young entrepreneurs back before the courts. The Lawsuit In 2021, this masthead revealed that Stake, a buzzy online casino already adorning the jerseys of one English Premier League football club, had been created in Australia by Craven and his American co-founder Bijan Tehrani despite being illegal to use in this country. Stake has since enjoyed a meteoric rise, with billions in revenue, more than 100 million visitors in December alone according to online traffic analysis firm Semrush, and an affiliated game streaming website called Kick. Advertisement But its unusual strategy of letting users effectively gamble with cryptocurrency rather than regular money has also caught the attention of regulators. The company was already facing a string of lawsuits in several US states when lead plaintiffs LaShawnna Ridley and Tiffany Hines filed their claim late last year. The pair, who have little public profile but appear to be working-class women from Virginia, allege that Stake, which is licensed in the Caribbean tax haven of Curacao, operated an illegal casino that preyed on consumers. Stake’s US arm does not allow users to gamble directly with real money. Instead, users bet with virtual tokens, some of which can be redeemed for cryptocurrency pegged in value to the US dollar. This, according to the lawsuit, was a fig leaf, designed to bypass state and federal laws. “Stake.us misrepresents itself to regulators and consumers; in reality, it operates as an illegal online casino,” the filing claims. The filing also alleges that Drake, a high-profile brand ambassador who in 2022 signed a promotional deal with Stake reportedly worth $100 million per year, influenced them to engage in harmful gambling on the platform. Advertisement “Stake.us preys on consumers in Virginia and nationwide who are lured into real money gambling, exposing consumers to substantial risks of gambling addictions and jeopardising their and their families’ financial well-being,” the plaintiffs claim. The suit alleges that Drake, Ross and Nguyen violated America’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations (RICO) laws – originally designed to deal with organised crime – by using Stake’s anonymous tipping function to cover up money transfers that were being used to pay bots, who in turn boosted the rapper’s streaming numbers. Nguyen, the Australian named in the lawsuit alongside Drake and Ross, acted as a “a broker and operational facilitator”, receiving cash and crypto while subsequently funding and orchestrating the bot campaigns, the plaintiffs claim. A Stake spokesman called the filing a “nonsense claim” and a “grifting lawsuit”. Advertisement “Stake.us does not have a tipping function that could be used in this way,” he said. “Our view is these kinds of cases are classic nuisance claims and they are very likely to be dismissed.” Stake is yet to file a response to the lawsuit, and none of the allegations in the case have been proven. The plaintiffs’ lawyers declined to comment. Who is George Nguyen? Unlike Drake, who has five Grammy Awards, Nguyen is a relatively unknown quantity, with the Virginia lawsuit being one of the few public documents about his life offline. According to sources familiar with the litigation, he is a man in his 30s who lives with his parents and spends most of his time posting memes on the internet. In 2021, he registered the business name Grandavious Chat with the corporate regulator. Documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) indicate the name is linked to a two-bedroom fibro shack in Cabramatta, owned by two people with the same last name as him. Advertisement When contacted by this masthead, Nguyen hung up and did not return subsequent calls and messages. On Instagram and X, Nguyen is a lot less shy. Under his handle (Grand Wizard was the title used by leaders in the Ku Klux Klan), he unleashes thousands of memes, hip-hop gossip items, tabloid news clippings and videos of cartel assassinations to over 500,000 followers, while never revealing his face or any details of his identity. Widespread chatter on social media suggests that Nguyen also administers the Instagram page of a close associate called Livingston George Allen, aka DJ Akademiks, a hip-hop podcaster and influencer with millions of followers across various platforms, who streams lengthy, rambling videos while swigging Hennessy from the bottle. Allen describes Nguyen as “my boy” and “Big AK’s top lieutenant Grandy”. Nguyen’s Instagram profile picture features an image of Allen. Advertisement Both men’s accounts were among those heavily promoting Drake during a messy, widely publicised “beef” with Lamar, flooding the zone with memes backing the Canadian and attacking his Californian rival. While the two rappers have been rivals for over a decade now, their feud escalated in 2024 as the pair traded “diss” tracks levelling salacious allegations at each other. The beef culminated with Lamar’s 2024 track Not Like Us, which implied Drake had a sexual interest in underage girls (“Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor”). It rose to the top of the charts, winning five Grammys and forming the centrepiece of his Super Bowl halftime show last year. Drake denied the claims and sued Universal Music Group for promoting them, so far unsuccessfully. As the beef grew, both rappers and their backers would accuse the other party of illegally inflating streaming numbers, which remain a key source of bragging rights and the focus of the Virginia lawsuit. Nguyen, operating under his Instagram alias, was squarely in Drake’s corner online. In one of his many posts, Nguyen described the rapper as “the greatest lyricist of our generation”. But he was more than just a distant admirer. Advertisement When Nguyen’s Instagram account was compromised last year, hackers revealed screenshots of him exchanging messages with Drake, which were subsequently posted on Reddit. The two discuss how to deal with pro-Lamar social media accounts, and make crude jokes about star NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ brother Jackson. Yet despite court documents placing Nguyen just one degree of separation from celebrity, his offline identity remains mysterious. Even Allen says he does not know who Nguyen actually is. “I don’t know who Grandwizard is. It’s my boy, but he might be AI. I think Grandwizard is AI. He never even sent me a selfie,” he said during a stream last year. The closest anyone’s come to hearing Nguyen’s actual voice was on one of Allen’s YouTube livestreams last October. In it, Allen played a recording he claims is of a phone call with a private investigator flown in from the United States and camped outside Nguyen’s front door, who proceeds to ask him a series of questions about his role in funding bot campaigns for Drake. Advertisement Advertisement But Craven has not heard of Nguyen. “There is no affiliation between Nguyen and Stake or Ed, regardless of what’s claimed in the court document,” a spokesman for Stake said. The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning. You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more. More: Online gambling Drake For subscribers Kishor Napier-Raman is a senior business writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously he worked as a CBD columnist and reporter in the federal parliamentary press gallery.Connect via Twitter or email.