Brazil court rejects R$ 163 million claim against Blaze in high-stakes betting dispute

A São Paulo civil court has refused to treat a bettor’s losses on Blaze as damages in a case that is already drawing scrutiny from Brazil’s Federal Police. For PSPs and operators, the interesting part is not the headline number; it is how the court described repeated high-limit play, custom VIP tables, and a betting flow that looked more like a payment circuit than a one-off wager.

1. The case was filed in the 44th Civil Court of São Paulo by lawyer Willer Tomaz de Sousa, who sought to recover money he says he lost on Blaze and argued that he had a gambling addiction, or ludopatia. His defense asked for the return of all amounts sent to the betting site.
2. Judge Guilherme Madeira Dezem rejected the losses framing and said the plaintiff had personally requested and obtained private and exclusive betting tables with “exorbitant” stakes, including “Blaze VIP Blackjack”, while also seeking successive increases in operational limits to reach bets of up to R$ 500,000.00 per wager. The judge did, however, grant him the right not to be contacted by the platform anymore.
3. According to the defense’s own figures, between January 2025 and July 2026 Tomaz placed R$ 6.6 billion in bets and recorded a loss of R$ 188.5 million. Over that 18-month period, he made 2,145 deposits totaling R$ 325 million.
4. The defense said it could not access gaming data before 2025 and had already found 55 pages of deposit records from earlier periods. It also argued that the main source of the losses was online casino tables that allowed bets of up to R$ 500,000 in 30-second rounds.
5. Blaze pushed back on the claim, saying the “net movement” of the account was not damage. In its view, the account functioned like a current account over 18 months, with repeated inflows and outflows, often on the same day, so adding up deposits alone distorted the picture.

The Federal Police is also investigating whether Tomaz used betting operations to launder money. The betting operator sits in a broader high-risk ecosystem: Blaze sponsors Neymar Jr., the Santos attacker, and previously had a deal with influencer Virgínia Fonseca.