‘Bachelor’ Alum Jade Roper Stripped Of $1 Million DraftKings Prize After Being Accused Of Cheating
Bachelor alum Jade Roper is losing out on her $1 million prize after the fantasy sports site DraftKings apparently determined that she and husband Tanner Tolbert broke the rules to win it.
Roper made headlines earlier this year when she came in first place in a Millionaire Maker fantasy football competition during the NFL’s wild card weekend. As Us Weekly reported, the contest had been under investigation after it came forward and said that both Tanner and Jade made the maximum number of entries and that all 300 entries between them were unique. That pointed to the couple coordinating in order to get around the site’s rules, which prevent people from working together to enter more than the maximum amount.
The site announced on Saturday that it had provided retroactive updates to some tournaments, not mentioning Jade directly.
“DraftKings has decided to update the standings for several contests,” the site said.
“All customers affected by the updated standings will be notified directly. It is our general policy not to comment further on such matters.”
The couple had collectively spent $7,500 to enter the contest. As E! News reported, the couple maxed out entries for football contests in each week of the NFL season, spending a total of $135,000 over the course of the year.
Her win had already caused a stir among fantasy players online, Us Weekly noted. Many people on Twitter noticed immediately that the couple had 300 different, unique rosters, which seemed impossible if they were not working together on it.
The person who had finished in second place in the contest also hired attorney Alan Milstein and made it clear they were ready to legally contest the results if Roper was declared the winner, E! News reported. That player, who was known publicly only by the username spclk36, was declared the winner in the update published by DraftKings.
“Thrilled to announce my client has been declared the winner of the DraftKings Millionaire Maker Contest,” Milstein tweeted.
“I have had my share of interesting cases but never conceived this would be one of them.”
As the prize came under investigation, the couple issued a statement saying that they had not worked together and accusing the site of giving extra scrutiny because the winner was a woman.
“Though we must ponder, would the questions, accusations and curiosity about this win be the same if the winner had been male and someone who wasn’t already in the public eye?” the couple said.
“It is incredibly important for us to establish that Jade’s win is nothing more than pure luck and we are confident that DraftKings will determine the same.”
