The last time I looked, there were also legal casinos using a similarly transparent schtick.

What they do is that you don’t directly win money from gambling. Everything is presented as if it’s related to a sweepstakes, because sweepstakes are a legal version of gambling.

It works something like, you can pay to get entries in a sweepstakes, and I think you can even gamble with your sweepstakes entries to try to get more entries. Then because you entered the sweepstakes, you automatically win, and the sweepstakes pays out in fake money like gems. Then you can also gamble with the fake money. Finally, the casinos will buy the fake money from you using real money.

I may not have gotten this explanation exactly right, but it’s in the ballpark.