Stephen Findeisen, better known to his 4.4 million YouTube subscribers as Coffeezilla, has claimed he was offered $1m by a licensed sportsbook firm ostensibly to ease his legal expenses in a lawsuit filed by fellow influencer Logan Paul.
Coffeezilla, who investigates scams and fraud, revealed the offer from the unnamed sportsbook in a recent video covering what he called an online gambling “epidemic.”
The seven-figure offer, Coffeezilla stated on the video, was supposedly intended to assist his legal costs in a defamation suit filed by WWE star Paul over his failed blockchain game, CryptoZoo. According to the YouTuber, the big sum was offered by an anonymous source: “one of the top people.”
The source told Coffeezilla their firm was regulated and “above board.” The YouTuber, however, said ultimately the offer conflicted with his journalistic standards and his publicly anti-gambling stance and he “had to say no.”
“Thank you for the offer, but you know, in my head,” Coffeezilla continued:
There’s no such thing as $1m, no strings attached.”
“I obviously can’t take $1m from a sports betting company and then go make a video criticizing sports betting,” he added. According to reports, Coffeezilla has also alleged a casino offered him $20,000 earlier this year to make a video critical of an unregulated rival.
The anti-gambling influencer’s exposé comes on the back of a recent Pew Research Center survey of nearly 10,000 US adults, which revealed 43% believe legal sports betting is bad for society, a percentage showing a 9% increase over a similar poll conducted in 2022.
