Vegas Dave Faces Arrest Warrant After Skipping Las Vegas Court Hearing Over $30M Judgment

A Las Vegas judge said he will issue a no-bail bench warrant for sports betting influencer David Oancea, better known as “Vegas Dave,” after Oancea failed to show up for a court hearing where he was supposed to surrender himself into custody. Oancea’s attorneys appeared before District Judge Joe Hardy on Thursday, but their client did not, leaving the judge to move forward with the arrest order for noncompliance with a contempt ruling.

The missed hearing is the latest turn in a long-running legal fight that has stripped away much of the flash Oancea built his brand on. Known for a following of more than 9 million Instagram users and a starring role in Showtime’s 2019 sports-betting docuseries “Action,” Oancea now faces jail time tied to a civil judgment he has repeatedly failed to satisfy.

How a Vacation Rental Dispute Became a $30 Million Judgment

The case traces back to a lawsuit filed by Cabo Platinum, a luxury vacation-rental company based in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, which accused Oancea of sabotaging bookings at several properties by blocking guest access and interfering with confirmed reservations. In July 2025, District Judge Timothy Williams sided with Cabo Platinum, ordering Oancea to pay a $30.2 million judgment and barring him from further disrupting rentals or restricting property access.

According to court filings, Oancea never paid the judgment and continued violating the court’s directives. That noncompliance escalated the case into a separate battle simply over collecting what he owed. In September 2025, a judge ordered him to surrender specific assets — three Mexican properties, roughly $375,000 in cryptocurrency, a Richard Mille watch, and several Hermès Birkin bags. He was given two weeks to comply and did not, instead claiming he no longer owned the items.

Contempt Ruling, a Stay Attempt, and a No-Show

That failure triggered a six-day evidentiary hearing, after which District Judge Tara Clark Newberry found Oancea in contempt, ruling that portions of his testimony were “false” and that his noncompliance was “willful.” Newberry wrote that Oancea was “not a credible witness,” describing his testimony as “inconsistent, contradicted by documentary evidence and prior sworn statements, and evasive and argumentative.” She gave him until August 5 to hand over the assets or report for incarceration, and separately ordered him to pay Cabo Platinum nearly $294,000 in attorneys’ fees and $17,000 in costs, calling his claimed inability to comply “self-created, strategic, and the result of voluntary acts to avoid compliance.”

Oancea’s legal team pursued an emergency stay petition to the Nevada Supreme Court, which pushed his surrender date back a week to August 13. The state’s high court denied that request in a two-page ruling, clearing the way for the surrender hearing to proceed. Oancea’s attorney, Alex LeVeque, told the court his client had “been apprised of the contempt order” but declined to say whether he knew Oancea’s location. A notice of appeal was subsequently filed in the case.

The dispute also stretches beyond Nevada’s borders — Cabo Platinum has separately sought recognition of the Nevada judgment in a Mexican civil court, a move that could put Oancea’s Mexican real estate holdings within reach of collection efforts. It isn’t the first time Oancea’s business dealings have drawn legal scrutiny; in 2017, he was federally indicted over allegations tied to misuse of Social Security numbers in sportsbook transactions.

What Comes Next

With the bench warrant now in motion, the immediate question is whether and when Oancea will be located and taken into custody. His appeal remains pending, but that filing does not appear to affect the active arrest order tied to his failure to appear. For a figure who built his public persona on high-stakes wins and a lavish lifestyle, the case has increasingly become a test of how far a court will go to enforce compliance when a judgment debtor simply doesn’t pay — and doesn’t show up.

Oancea rose to prominence in the sports betting world through a string of publicized high-dollar wagers and a personal brand built on flaunting winnings, from designer bags to luxury real estate, that helped him amass millions of social media followers well beyond the betting community itself. That same visibility now cuts the other way: every step of the Cabo Platinum collection fight, from the six-day evidentiary hearing to the denied Nevada Supreme Court stay, has played out in public view, contrasting sharply with the image he spent years cultivating. Bettors weighing their own online sportsbooks in Nevada can expect the story to keep drawing attention given Oancea’s profile in the sports betting community, and the outcome of his pending appeal could shape how future judgment-collection disputes involving high-profile bettors are litigated in the state.