Gambling Tragedies
Tragedy Brought on by Gambling HBO’s Love Child is a documentary that draws its plot from a horrific 2010 incident that occurred in South Korea. Kim Yun-jeong and her husband, Kim Jae-beom, were first-time parents to a 3-month-old child named Sa-rang. Unfortunately, both parents were also raging online gambling addicts. Gambling addiction often affects people who also struggle with alcohol abuse. Ultimately, it’s the loss of control that defines addictive behavior regardless of the substance or activity involved. Gambling addiction statistics present this “loss of control” factor in a stark and alarming light. Tragic gambling stories can end in different ways. But one of the most-common endings is when a problem gambler winds up broke. Terrance Watanabe, Leonard Tose, Art Schlichter, David Milch, Harry Kakavas and Jimmy White know all too well what it’s like to lose one’s wealth through gambling.
Something bad or painful will eventually happen when you continue to gamble.
EMBEZZLEMENT, MURDER/ SUICIDE, CHILD ABUSE, and DIVORCE!
'President S. Hunter Howard Jr., of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce expressed his sentiment about video poker machines in his state: 'I thought video gambling was more of a nuisance than anything else, a year ago. But then I started studying-and watching-the industry in action. Today, I know gambling is not just a nuisance to our state, that's the least of it. It's a destructive force that is completely out of control . And the only way-the only way-to rein it in is to cut it off completely. ' (Charleston [W.V.] Gazette, 6/12/00)
Note: the following was written by former Rhode Island state representative Rod Driver.
'Compulsive gamblers are usually good people who have become trapped in an addiction every bit as destructive as alcoholism. A young man from Pawtucket (R.I.) told police that he had been robbed at gunpoint to avoid admitting to his family that he had been to Foxwoods and lost $4,000 he had borrowed from friends for his daughter's medical expenses.
CELEBRITIES
'Norm MacDonald had better hope his ABC series Norm stays on the air. The former Saturday Night Live player admits he's deep into gambling-but doesn't think he needs help. MacDonald tells Details magazine he has bet up to $200,000 on a weekend's worth of ballgames and spent 12 straight hours at a craps table. 'A lot of times on Saturday Night Live , I'd be thinking about gambling instead of the show,' MacDonald recalls. He admits he's taken some big hits. 'I once considered going to Gamblers Anonymous, but I figured it's for losers,' he tells writer Michael Kaplan, adding, 'I don't see how it can physically harm you. All it can do is take away your money, and you can always make more money.' (Denver Rocky Mountain News, 10/27/99)
Drunken gamblers spend scads of money. The former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles' testified before Congress that he gambled away $50 million-and ultimately his NFL franchise-while well-plied with casino alcohol.
'The former owner of the San Francisco 49ers testified Monday that former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards extorted $400,000 from him in return for ensuring that he received a state license to operate a riverboat casino.' (Dallas Morning News, 3/28/00)
EMBEZZLEMENT
'An insidious new kind of crime is taking hold, radiating out across southern New England from the two Indian casinos in eastern Connecticut. It is embezzlement committed by desperate gamblers, usually compulsive gamblers, who work in positions of trust.... A sampling of criminal cases over the past two years shows that the amounts of money can be staggering and that an increasing number of the gamblers are women. In all these cases, the money was used to gamble at the Foxwoods Resort Casino or the Mohegan Sun casino, authorities said.
In May 1998, Edward Hutner of Rocky Hill was sentenced to prison for embezzling $1 million from his employer A few days later, Norwalk investment adviser Richard Scarso was sent to prison for stealing $1.4 million from 13 families.
In the fall of 1998, two Massachusetts men, Thomas Aldred and Neal J. Colley, were sentenced to prison and home confinement for the theft of nearly $2 million from the company where Aldred worked by creating fictitious shipments of supplies.
Last year, April Corlies was accused of embezzling more than $300,000 from the Cross Sound Ferry Co. in New London by manipulating records of ticket sales. She is awaiting trial.
Early this year, Lynne M. Frank, who handled bar receipts at The Bushnell, was charged with embezzling $91,000.
A few weeks ago, James Coughlin of Waterford avoided prison in his home improvement scam by agreeing to partially repay victims, who lost more than $200,000....
This week state police are working on an investigation expected to lead to the arrest of Yvonne Bell, who was Ledyard's tax collector until she resigned in June after money was discovered missing. An audit completed recently put the figure at more than $300,000.
Two years ago former Sprague Tax Collector Mary L. Thomas repaid $105,000 she had stolen from her town and was sentenced to probation.' (Hartford Courant, 8/23/00)
'A state assistant attorney general told a jury Tuesday that former Grandville (Mich.) Police Chief Kenneth Madejczk embezzled more than $70,000 in city money to fund a gambling habit.... Michigan Assistant Attorney General Mark Blumer said in his opening statement that Madejczk likely used the money to fund his habit of spending up to $1,250 weekly on state lottery tickets.' (Associated Press, 4/11/00)
'A former Monrovia (Calif.) cop who stole $124,000 from that city's police officers association was sentenced today to 16 months in prison and ordered to repay the money ... The former La Verne resident embezzled the MPOA money from the association between December 1994 and December 1998 to pay off gambling debts.' (City News Service, 6/23/00)
'Ledyard's (Conn.) veteran tax collector was charged Thursday with pilfering more than $300,000 in taxpayer money, much of which she is suspected to have gambled at Foxwoods Resort Casino.... Local officials also say that police tracked (Yvonne) Bell's gambling activity at Foxwoods and have determined that, since late 1997, her gambling activity there totals $900,000.' (The Day [New London, Conn.], 10/6/00)
'A city employee in Warwick embezzled money from the city to cover her husband's gambling debts.
A Providence lawyer embezzled $530,000 from an elderly aunt. He frequented Foxwoods, but he was arrested at a casino in the Bahamas, leaving his ex-wife and his children without support.
'A retired judge has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges he concealed payments to creditors, including Foxwoods Resort Casino, in a 1996 bankruptcy filing.... In 1998, citing Foxwoods records, The Providence Journal reported (John) Lallo had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars at the casino between 1992 and 1997.'
To support his gambling at Foxwoods, a janitor at an elementary school in East Providence stole money from funds collected for the student yearbook.
The treasurer of the North Providence police union embezzled $43,000 for his gambling habit.
An assistance vice president at a Providence insurance company embezzled $1.1 million from his employer.
A former Rhode Island governor was convicted of taking kickbacks from contractors. He was a frequent visitor to Foxwoods and we don't know how much of the money he lost there.
An employee at an automobile dealership in Norwich embezzled $100,000 from her employer, and lost most of it at Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun. A former utility lineman in Connecticut was sentenced to five years in prison for climbing utility poles and stealing copper wire that he sold to raise money for his gambling addiction.
Two men in Massachusetts 'created' a phony chemical company and collected more than $1.9 million from a manufacturer in Rockland on the basis of phony invoices. A man in Peabody stole $4 million from his family's paving business.
A middle-aged Connecticut woman got just a little more than $700 when she robbed the New Haven Savings Bank to finance her gambling addiction. After serving six months in prison and nine weeks in gamblers' rehab she got on a bus and went back to Foxwoods.
The chief fundraiser for the late Sen. Paul Tsongas's presidential campaign took $1 million in campaign contributions and loans to pay gambling debts. Tsongas withdrew from the race and the fundraiser went to prison.
SUICIDES / MURDERS
A young woman drowned herself in Connecticut's Thames River after maxing out her credit cards at Foxwoods. She left a husband and two small children.
A highly regarded police chief in Central Falls took his own life when he couldn't cope with his gambling debts.
A nurse in Reading, Mass., worked double shifts to pay her husband's gambling debts. When she restricted her husband's access to money, he killed her. On his way home, after disposing of his wife's car, he stopped to buy more scratch tickets.' (Providence Journal-Bulletin)
'A gambler losing big dollars in the high-roller area of the MotorCity Casino in Detroit pulled out a gun Wednesday, shot himself in the head and died, police said. Terrified gamblers fled from the blackjack table where off-duty Oak Park Police Sgt. Solomon Bell had been consistently losing large bets, witnesses said....
'Detroit police said Bell had been gambling earlier in the day at MGM Grand Detroit Casino and was hoping to make up for some losses there. They said he lost between $15,000 and $20,000 in the two casinos during the day.' (Detroit Free Press, 1/27/00)
'Early this week, John Carvalho, a 49-year-old bank employee from Rhode Island, drove his car down North Anguilla Road and turned onto Miner Pentway, a narrow dead-end lane that winds through the northern part of Stonington (Conn.).... He pulled his 1998 Toyota to the side of a dirt track, got out, locked the doors and walked into the woods where, police say, he took his own life.... Police sources said that Carvalho, who had no history of addiction and lived a quiet, middle-class life, had developed a gambling habit over the past few months that began on a trip to Las Vegas this summer. Police believe he was driving home from Foxwoods Resort Casino when, in desperation, he killed himself. Carvalho's is the latest gambling-related suicide in the region since Foxwoods, the area's first casino, opened in 1992. Experts say many such deaths may have gone unreported or unrecognized in the area and beyond.' (The Day [New London, Conn.], 9/9/00)
'Before taking his life last November, Central Falls (R.I.) Policy Chief Thomas Moffatt had misappropriated departmental fund and borrowed heavily from his officers to pay gambling debts, a state police investigation has concluded. Moffatt owed more than $60,000 to his officers and possibly thousands more to several accounts within the department that were under his control, Col. Edmond Culhane, state police superintendent, said yesterday....'Culhane declined to answer a question about a ... report that Moffatt owed $40,000 to the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun Casinos. 'The message from the whole thing is the dangers of gambling, quite frankly, ' said Culhane. 'Tom Moffatt was a truly honorable guy. He had a superb career as a state trooper. He was a great family man and a terrific policeman. This was his one weakness and it took him down.' ( Providence Journal, 5/2/99)
'A South Bend (Ind.) man convicted of murdering a man for his casino winnings was sentenced to 65 years in prison.' (Las Vegas Sun, 3/14/00)
CHILD ABUSE
'A Rhode Island woman was arrested Saturday after police discovered that she left four children unattended for 14 hours at Foxwoods [Casino].' (The Day [New London, Conn.], 7/16/00)
'Council Bluffs (Iowa) police arrested a Lincoln (Nebr.) woman Monday after discovering her 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter sitting alone inside a van while their mother was inside a casino.' (Omaha World-Herald, 9/13/00)
'Children have been left unattended at Indiana's riverboat casinos more than three dozen times while their parents or other guardians were gambling during the past 14 months. A Courier-Journal review of Indiana Gaming Commission records found 37 instances involving an estimated 72 abandoned children since May 1999, when the state first began compiling reports of such episodes.... In one case, an infant had to be revived with oxygen.' (Louisville Courier-Journal , 7/18/00)
VietNamNet Bridge – Thousands of Vietnamese women have become familiar clients of casinos along the Vietnam-Cambodia border.
There are 14 casinos in Cambodia, which are located very near from the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Up to half of them (Winn, Le Macao, Chateau, Las Vegas Sun or Titan King) are built in Bavet in Svay Rieng province to mainly serve Vietnamese gamblers. Vietnamese gamblers, including thousands of women, often pass the Moc Bai border gate in the southern province of Tay Ninh to Bavet.
VietNamNet’s reporters visited casino Winn at 10 am on a Saturday. This casino is known recently for ruthless assaults against indebted gamblers.
According to the casino’s rules, visitors are not allowed to bring cell phones, cameras, sound recorders, etc. into the casino. These items must be locked in the casino’s safety boxes. Casino staffs in black trousers and white shirts always smile with customers.
The casino was chock-a-block with gamblers, especially at baccarat, roulette and black jack tables.
Casino Winn, a popular destination in the tours of a transnational tourism company, is decorated luxuriously. The rooms are lit with hundreds of lamps, which make gamblers forget the time.
Around one hour after we entered the casino, the number of players at black jack tables increased sharply. Around 70 percent of them were women.
A middle-aged woman approached us, introducing herself as Hien, a Vietnamese, a creditor at the casino. Hien said she was able to lend us as much as we need. After we refused to borrow money from her, M, a guide said that if a gambler borrows $100, he will have to pay $10 for each winning game. In the case that the gambler loses all his money, the creditor will send his/her employees to escort the debtor to his/her home to take money or call the debtor’s family to come to the casino to pay the debt to ransom the debtor.
There are a lot of tragedies related to Vietnamese women at this casino. Hoang, a former staff member at casino Winn, who currently works for a car repair shop in Bavet, said, “Many Vietnamese women often give guards VND50,000-70,000 to remind them to call their husbands at a certain time to trick their husbands into thinking that they are at home”.
Hoang said some women lost tens of thousands of USD a day at gambling.
Recently HCM City People’s Court sentenced four women who swindled assets to gamble in Cambodia. One was sentenced to 13 years in jail and three others to 3-5 years in jail.
These women leased at least six cars at the price of $1300/month and then mortgaged the cars for $15,000 in Tay Ninh to gamble in Cambodian casinos.
In the latest case, the wife of a journalist in the southern province of Long An has just confessed to burning her husband to death after he didn’t agree to sell their house to pay her debts at casinos in Cambodia.
This case is now the center of public attention and is fresh evidence of the tragedies caused by women who are gambling addicts.
In recent years “gambling ladies” have become familiar words in the local media. In HCM City alone, police investigated hundreds of gambling cases each year and over half of the gamblers are women.
According to police, women who gamble at home belong to various social classes but there are a few really rich women. However, most of women who gamble in Cambodia are wealthy women or state employees.
In 2008, the cashier of the Post Office of Bac Lieu province was sentenced to death for appropriating over VND15.3 billion ($765,000) to gamble.
In October 2009, Vu Thi Ba, 32, an employee of a state agency in Ha Dong district, Hanoi, was prosecuted for appropriating a car for money to gamble.
In HCM City, a woman named Trang is very “famous” among casino ladies. The young girl gambled in Hanoi, Hai Phong, HCM City, Tay Ninh and Cambodia. She lost up to $40,000 a night at a casino in Cambodia.
She used fake documents to withdraw over VND400 million ($20,000) of a joint stock company in Hanoi.
In May 2010, police arrested Nguyen Thi Hanh, 32, in the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai for swindling. Earlier Hanh was a famous coffee trader in Gia Lai. From July to November 2009, this women received cash from partners to purchase coffee and borrowed money from four companies and eleven individuals totaling over VND17 billion (around $900,000). However, she only paid over VND5 billion for coffee and gambled away the remaining cash.
Other tragedies
Dozens of gamblers in Binh Duong and Tay Ninh province fell into the trap of usurers at casinos in Cambodia.
According to victims who were cleaned out in gambling and ransomed by their families, intermediates introduced them to a young man named Khoa at Winn casino in Bavet, Cambodia. When they arrived at the Moc Bai border gate in Tay Ninh, Khoa’s subordinates took them to the casino and they were treated like special guests.
Nguyen Huu Ba, 20, from Ben Cat district, Binh Duong province, recalled: “After we met with Khoa at Winn casino, he hired a hotel room for us. After taking a bath, Khoa took us to a restaurant. He told us that we would not get rich if we quit after 1-2 losing games”.
When Ba and his friends were nearly drunken Khoa paid the meal and gave $4000 to Ba and his three friends to gamble at Winn casino.
After several hours at the casino, the group lost all $4000. They borrowed $2000 from Khoa to continue the game and also lost the money. They asked Khoa to lend them some more but Khoa told them to temporarily stop because they had bad luck. He took the group to a restaurant for lunch and after that forced them to an inn to sign a debit note. Khoa said that if their families didn’t pay the debts, he would cut out some of their internal organs.
Of dozens Vietnamese gamblers confided at Winn casino for losing at gambling, many are very poor and wanted to change their lives with the money won.
Nguyen Thi Dung, 41, from Ben Cat District, Binh Duong province said that her family has three times paid $10,000 of ransom to rescue her son from casinos .
Nguyen Minh, also from Ben Cat district, had to pay the ransom for his son twice. “The first time he was confided, we had to mortgage our motorbikes, fridge, television set and borrow from usurers to get $5000 to pay the ransom”.
“They called me and said that they made cuts on his face and that if I didn’t save him, they would cut out his kidney,” Minh said.
Gambling Strategies Roulette
Minh and his wife had to see an usurer and kneel down to borrow $3000 to pay the ransom.
Gambling Tragedies Meaning
Gambling Strategies
Quoc Quang – Minh Dung