Stop Predatory Gambling

Make the casinos return the stolen money

by spgadmin

The government program of predatory gambling can now add several more names to its continually expanding list of victims.

A longtime bookkeeper for a small Chicago machinery company has been charged with embezzling more than $1.5 million from the business to gamble most of it away on high-end slot machines at Indiana casinos. Twenty-two people work for the Chicago machinery company. Its owners had to take out mortgages against their homes to stay afloat.

There are dozens of stories of bookkeepers and treasurers embezzling money to ultimately lose it at casinos.  The casinos have the best data mining operation about their visitors than any other business in the nation. Does anyone except for the willfully ignorant believe that the casinos don’t know the occupations of these gamblers? What was the true “predicted lifetime value” these casinos had identified for this woman? It certainly was dramatically less than $1.5 million. How could they not know the money she was losing was stolen money?

There is no question they knew she was a bookkeeper with access to money that wasn’t hers and they knew from her player tracking information she was a problem gambler. If she had stolen a $1.5 million painting, whoever bought the stolen property would be obliged to return it to its rightful owner. Prosecutors must force  the casinos to return all of the stolen money immediately.