Florida man claims Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, for a time, withheld $500,500 payout
Emmanuel Kromah arrived in Cherokee in June 2024 — fresh off a flight from Miami and a three-hour drive — hoping to collect $500,500 in winnings from a bet he’d placed at the North Carolina casino.
Instead, two employees of Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort asked security to escort Kromah out of the building, and called the police to meet him outside. Kromah’s business partner posted a video of Kromah being led out of the casino on Instagram and YouTube, garnering millions of views.
“When you lose your money, they’re OK with that,” Kromah scoffed in the video. “When you win big, they don’t want to pay you out.”
Now, Kromah is taking the casino to federal court. His lawsuit alleges the casino defamed him, interfered with business contracts and carried out unfair and deceptive trade practices.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. Nevada-based hotel and casino company Caesars Entertainment, which operates Harrah’s casino and more than 50 others nationwide, and local small business lender Sequoyah Fund are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Kromah’s suit stems from his $143,000 bet that the Boston Celtics would win the 2024 NBA Championship, which he placed with Harrah’s casino in February of that year, according to the complaint. When the Celtics won the championship in mid-June of 2024, Kromah earned $500,500 in winnings.
After Kromah called the casino several times about when he’d receive his winnings, an employee left Kromah a voicemail saying that he could collect his prize once the NBA finals ended at the end of June.
But when Kromah and his business partner arrived at the casino on June 30, 2024, two employees at the front desk told him he couldn’t collect his winnings, the lawsuit alleges, addressing him with “rudeness, discrimination, and accusations of being a fraud and criminal.” They also refused to contact the employee who had left Kromah the voicemail, according to the complaint.
The two employees then called security and the local police. In the video, the employees appeared to be perp walking Kromah, who is Black, out of the building “as if [he] was a criminal being arrested,” the lawsuit alleges.
A spokesperson for the casino did not respond to three emails and a voicemail requesting comment for this story.
The casino paid Kromah his winnings on July 10, 2024. A week later, he received a letter banning him and his sports betting business, FortManny Consulting — which is also a plaintiff in the suit — from Caesars’ Entertainment-owned properties because of “regulatory concerns.”
Ranchor Harris, a defamation lawyer representing Kromah in the lawsuit, characterized the Caesars ban as the “tipping point” for Kromah to pursue legal action. The casino never clarified why Kromah had been banned, Harris said.
