Millie Elder-Holmes

Māori ‘wellness’ influencer cashing in on gambling addiction

Millie Elder-Holmes has spent years painting herself as a spiritual Māori wellness guru on Instagram. With her polished yoga poses, açai bowls, and meditative captions, she’s amassed over 120,000 followers. Behind the soothing colour palette and faux positivity is a reality far uglier. Millie has been caught promoting offshore gambling sites to her audience, profiting off the same communities she claims to uplift.

Despite being formally warned by the Department of Internal Affairs back in April, Millie couldn’t resist the payout. She kept promoting online gambling content that is illegal under New Zealand law. So the department issued a $5,000 fine. What has she done since? Ignored it.

The deadline to pay her fine is 30 June 2025. If she continues dodging responsibility, the matter will be passed to the Ministry of Justice for enforcement. While the clock ticks, Millie continues to sell her carefully curated image, pretending to stand for health and empowerment while encouraging her followers to throw money into the destructive pit of online gambling.

The New Zealand Herald didn’t just expose Millie Elder-Holmes’s gambling promotions, they also ended up advertising the very same offshore casino in their coverage. By publishing screenshots that clearly displayed the casino’s name and branding, the Herald inadvertently gave free publicity to the illegal gambling site. While reporting on the influencer’s wrongdoing, the paper included direct references and images that served as promotion for the offshore operator, potentially driving curious readers straight to a platform that’s banned under New Zealand law. This raises uncomfortable questions about the media’s role in amplifying harmful gambling content, even when aiming to call it out.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Gambling harm in Aotearoa is real and devastating. Māori are disproportionately affected, making up 30 percent of problem gamblers despite being only 17 percent of the population. And here we have someone with a public platform, who wraps herself in faux-Māori identity, choosing to exploit her own people for personal gain.

Millie Elder-Holmes is not a role model. If she truly cared about wellbeing, she would stop hiding behind filtered posts and influencer spin, pay her fine, issue a public apology, and cut all ties with gambling promotion. Until then, her açai bowls are bitter, her yoga is hollow, and her credibility is dead

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