The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a civil action in federal court against Lottery.com and three of its former executives, alleging fraud related to the merger that took the company public in 2021.
In the Jan. 22 filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the SEC alleges that ex-CEO Anthony DiMatteo and former executives Matthew Clemenson and Ryan Dickinson conducted fraudulent schemes intended to inflate Lottery.com’s revenue before and after the merger with special-purpose acquisition company Trident Acquisitions Corp.
That merger formed a new public company named Lottery.com, Inc. in October 2021. Lottery.com rebranded as SEGG Media Corporation in July 2025.
False transactions at heart of allegations
According to the filing, Trident would have had to return over $60 million to investors and then-Trident CEO Vadim Komissarov stood to lose millions if the firm did not complete a merger with a private company before a regulatory deadline.
Between November 2020 and May 2022, Komissarov and the three then-executives at the pre-merger Lottery.com allegedly conducted a phony $9 million transaction of valueless customer data to artificially and falsely inflate Lottery.com’s revenue. The suit described the transaction as “a circular transfer of money for a sham transaction that had no economic substance.” The defendants allegedly overstated the acquisition cost of the entities involved and created documentation for auditors to make both deals appear genuine.
The SEC filing adds that in the weeks before the merger, at Komissarov’s urging, the Lottery.com executives further falsely inflated Lottery.com’s revenue through a $30 million line of credit. The defendants allegedly did not inform other board members about th eline of credit and passed it off as additional cash. They then allegedly carried out two additional bogus sales totaling over $35 million after Lottery.com merged and went public.
These transactions caused Lottery.com to overstate its 2021 revenues by more than 300% and its revenues for the first quarter of 2022 by nearly 800%, says the filing. A core aim of the schemes was to attract investors, convince Trident shareholders not to redeem their shares prior to the merger and to make a profit for themselves, claims the SEC.
The SEC asserts that the four defendants violated provisions of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act. The Commission is seeking recompense including injunctive relief, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains and civil penalties and wants the four defendants banned from holding officer or director roles.
SBC Americas reached out to Lottery.com for comment but had not heard back at the time of publishing.
Komissarov indicted on fraud charges last year
The suit adds that the board discovered the fraud by mid-2022. Chief Revenue Officer Clemenson and Chief Financial Officer Dickinson resigned in July 2022 and DiMatteo stepped down as CEO later that month after the company confirmed that it had overstated its cash balance by $30 million in an SEC filing. Numerous board members resigned in the following months.
In March 2023, Nasdaq warned Lottery.com that it was at risk of being delisted due to non-compliance with listing rules. That came after board member Naila Chowdhry resigned and accused fellow board members of breaches of fiduciary duties.
The SEC’s new civil suit follows the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York’s statement in February 2025 that Komissarov was charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, making false SEC filings, perjury, obstruction of justice and making false and misleading statements. Komissarov allegedly made around $600,000 by selling shares of Lottery.com before the true state of the company was disclosed.
Earlier in 2025, Lottery.com and Dickerson were also named in a class-action lawsuit in Texas over allegations that they helped to facilitate a long-running fraud by colluding to buy winning lottery tickets.
SEGG intends to re-establish Lottery.com in US
Texas-based SEGG Media operates as a global sports, entertainment and gaming conglomerate and owns other assets including Sports.com and Concerts.com.
While it has continued to expand and diversify, the company announced last September that it intended to re-establish Lottery.com in the U.S. via affiliate partnerships with state lotteries. It said at that time that it was in the process of securing deals with the state lotteries of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia.
