Where is Chumba Casino located? Type that into a search bar expecting a street address and you will not find one company at one location — you will find a Perth, Australia tech company running a US-facing sweepstakes brand through a pair of Malta-registered entities. Both pieces matter, because they answer different questions: who built this, and whose law actually governs it.

The Parent Company: Perth, Australia

Chumba Casino is a brand of VGW (Virtual Gaming Worlds), a privately held technology company headquartered in Perth, Western Australia. VGW was founded in 2010 by Laurence Escalante, who built it into the largest operator in the US sweepstakes-casino space — Chumba Casino, Global Poker, and Luckyland Slots all run under the same VGW umbrella. Escalante now owns VGW outright: he bought out the company’s remaining minority shareholders in 2025 and holds the business through his family office, Lance East Office.

Two entities, two jobs: VGW Malta Limited (company number C74706) is the operator that actually runs Chumba Casino. VGW Games Limited (C76814) is the separate entity that runs the sweepstakes promotion itself — the free Sweeps Coin giveaways and the alternative method of entry — under Malta Gaming Authority license MGA/B2C/188/2010. A third Malta entity, VGW Malta Holding Limited (C78260), sits in the same corporate family. Neither of the operating entities is Australian; Perth is where VGW is run from, not where Chumba is legally registered.

Why Malta, Not a US State

Chumba is not a licensed casino under any US state gaming law — it is a sweepstakes promotion, and that legal structure is exactly why its registered entities sit in Malta rather than New Jersey or Michigan. Gold Coins carry no cash value, and Sweeps Coins are given away free rather than sold, which keeps the model inside sweepstakes law rather than gambling law in most states. A Malta Gaming Authority license oversees VGW Games Limited as a company; it is not a substitute for a US gaming license and doesn’t plug Chumba into any state regulator’s dispute process.

Location Doesn’t Mean Out of Reach

A Perth-based parent and a Malta-registered operator can make it look like Chumba sits outside the reach of US regulators. September 2026 proved otherwise: New York Attorney General Letitia James announced an $8 million settlement with VGW over Chumba, Global Poker, and Luckyland Slots continuing to operate in New York for months after the state sent a cease-and-desist letter in mid-2025. VGW didn’t admit wrongdoing under the settlement’s terms — an Assurance of Discontinuance — but it paid the eight figures anyway and now has to let New York players who never redeemed old Sweeps Coins do so for a full year. The location made the process slower and more expensive for New York to pursue than it would be against a US-licensed operator, but it didn’t make VGW untouchable.

What the Location Actually Means for Players

  • No US gaming commission stands behind Chumba. If a payout dispute goes wrong, there is no state gaming board to escalate to the way there would be with a licensed online casino.
  • Malta oversight covers VGW as a company, not a player’s individual account or a specific US state’s consumer protections.
  • State-level action is still possible, as New York just showed — a foreign registration slows enforcement down, it does not prevent it.