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Gambling Addictions Fueling Crime
Gambling addiction fuelling crime
Incidents of fraud, theft skyrocketing as casinos and gaming outlets increase, officials say: Men, women alike: agency
Tom Blackwell
National Post
Las Vegas was once the North American mecca for gamblers. But there has been a proliferation of gambling outlets in Canada -- there are now 50 permanent casinos -- and experts estimate about 4% of the Canadian population may be affected by gambling problems.
A growing number of Canadians are being driven to white-collar crime by a potent new force -- gambling addictions that create a thirst for cash and can prompt ordinary people to embezzle millions of dollars.
The number of fraud and internal theft cases involving problem gamblers has skyrocketed along with the expansion of casinos, slot machines and Internet gaming in the last 10 years, say police, lawyers and addiction counsellors.
These bourgeois crooks tend to be trusted members of their organizations, with families and nice homes and are just as likely to be women as men. They include one female bank employee in Saskatchewan who took her employer for $200,000, was convicted, then later got caught stealing another $64,000. A single video lottery terminal sucked up all the money.
An RCMP officer who tailed organized crime figures around Ontario's casinos stole from his unit's expense fund to feed his own gambling habit. A stock broker siphoned money from his clients to bankroll his wife's wagering.
''At one time, most of our large internal thefts were drug-related. Now they're more or less gambling related,'' says Sergeant Bud Snow of the Halifax police fraud squad. ''Over the last few years, there are probably more and more getting involved in stealing to support their gambling habit.''
Jack, the former Mountie, got the bug playing backroom poker games with friends once a week. When he was transferred to the Northwest Territories, it became three times a week and the stakes grew to thousands of dollars a night, which he funded with the northern living allowance provided by the force. Then Jack [not his real name] moved back to Toronto in 1996 to work on an organized crime unit. His job often involved doing surveillance of crime figures visiting Casino Niagara in Niagara Falls and Casino Rama.
He returned to the casinos' poker parlors to play himself. Jack started liquidating the family holdings to cover ever-expanding losses. With the stocks and bonds gone, having taken out loans to pay maxed-out credit card bills, he turned to an RCMP expense fund he controlled, stealing over $10,000. The end grew near after a transfer to Windsor, where he would visit the casino daily, before work, during his shifts and after.
An audit finally uncovered the thefts, he was charged, convicted and thrown off the force.
''The worst thing I had to do was tell my daughter [now 12] that she might read something in the newspaper about me, that I had stolen money,'' he says.
No one at the casinos where he was a regular -- including the security staff with whom he worked -- ever suggested he cool the habit. ''The casinos ... don't care about compulsive gamblers,'' he said.
Jack finally sought help from the Windsor Region Problem Gambling Service and has started a new life, with a management job in an automotive-related business.
Until about a decade ago, the opportunity for people like him to gamble in Canada was limited. Bingo halls, lottery tickets, charity casinos and trips to Las Vegas were about it. But then provincial governments, under pressure to cut taxes and spur on sluggish economies, discovered gambling's allure and built a powerful gaming industry. Canadians can play now at 50 permanent casinos, 21,000 machines and 38,000 VLTs.
A parallel industry has also sprung up. Dozens of gambling addiction agencies welcome a steady supply of clients, backed by a fledgling community of gaming researchers. Estimates of the number of people with gambling problems varies, although most experts agree at least 4% of the population may be affected. Pathological gamblers, the ones who might turn to crime to support their habit, are a smaller proportion.
Key features of the condition are a tendency to ''chase'' losses -- to keep on gambling in a quixotic attempt to win back lost money -- and then to lie about the mounting debts, said Lisa Root, head of a Niagara-area problem gambling agency. That's usually when the stealing begins, though gamblers tend to delude themselves into thinking they are ''borrowing'' the money and will pay it back when that elusive winning streak finally arrives, she said.
''What else is interesting is the number of women committing these kinds of crimes as a direct result of their gambling problem,'' said Ms. Root. "We're talking about women who are married and employed and have raised families quite successfully and generally are good citizens.''
Barbara Ann Horvath was one of them, a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce employee described as intelligent and charming by one judge, who stole more than $200,000 from her employer and Canada Trust to feed a VLT addiction. In a landmark judgment, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal ruled her acts were those of a ''seriously diseased'' mind and said such thieves should be given some leniency. She ended up with a conditional sentence. But last year Ms. Horvath was back in court, charged with stealing another $64,000 from her new employers to pump money into that same video lottery terminal. This time she was sent to jail for two years less a day. Her husband left her, taking custody of their child.
''My feeling is that if you get rid of the VLTs, you wouldn't have the embezzlement,'' says Staff-Sergeant Chris Oleson, who heads the RCMP's economic crime squad in Saskatchewan.
Not all police have seen evidence that gambling -- like a new cocaine -- is driving the middle classes to felony. A Vancouver police fraud squad spokesman said he's seen no increase in such crimes, though British Columbia is the last province to embrace gaming.
Elsewhere, the evidence is abundant. Detective Mike Kelly of the Windsor police is working on a case involving an employee who stole $4-million from a local manufacturer. ''He said it's all gone to gaming and there is very little hope of recovery.''
Windsor recorded a dramatic case last year, when Carmen Lauzon, a Bank of Montreal manager, was convicted of stealing $1.2-million from the accounts of clients at her branch. Ms. Lauzon got a two-year jail sentence.
Not everyone is convinced by the tearful stories of addiction. Sharon Pratchler, a Crown attorney in Saskatchewan, said she suspects blaming the VLTs has become a too-convenient strategy to avoid prison time.
But some addicts come to the attention of the police even before they have turned to stealing.
''We've had a number of calls,'' says Det. Kelly. ''But there's nothing we can do. They need a credit counsellor or clergy ... It breaks my heart to hear it. Families are being destroyed.''
Incidents of fraud, theft skyrocketing as casinos and gaming outlets increase, officials say: Men, women alike: agency
Tom Blackwell
National Post
Las Vegas was once the North American mecca for gamblers. But there has been a proliferation of gambling outlets in Canada -- there are now 50 permanent casinos -- and experts estimate about 4% of the Canadian population may be affected by gambling problems.
A growing number of Canadians are being driven to white-collar crime by a potent new force -- gambling addictions that create a thirst for cash and can prompt ordinary people to embezzle millions of dollars.
The number of fraud and internal theft cases involving problem gamblers has skyrocketed along with the expansion of casinos, slot machines and Internet gaming in the last 10 years, say police, lawyers and addiction counsellors.
These bourgeois crooks tend to be trusted members of their organizations, with families and nice homes and are just as likely to be women as men. They include one female bank employee in Saskatchewan who took her employer for $200,000, was convicted, then later got caught stealing another $64,000. A single video lottery terminal sucked up all the money.
An RCMP officer who tailed organized crime figures around Ontario's casinos stole from his unit's expense fund to feed his own gambling habit. A stock broker siphoned money from his clients to bankroll his wife's wagering.
''At one time, most of our large internal thefts were drug-related. Now they're more or less gambling related,'' says Sergeant Bud Snow of the Halifax police fraud squad. ''Over the last few years, there are probably more and more getting involved in stealing to support their gambling habit.''
Jack, the former Mountie, got the bug playing backroom poker games with friends once a week. When he was transferred to the Northwest Territories, it became three times a week and the stakes grew to thousands of dollars a night, which he funded with the northern living allowance provided by the force. Then Jack [not his real name] moved back to Toronto in 1996 to work on an organized crime unit. His job often involved doing surveillance of crime figures visiting Casino Niagara in Niagara Falls and Casino Rama.
He returned to the casinos' poker parlors to play himself. Jack started liquidating the family holdings to cover ever-expanding losses. With the stocks and bonds gone, having taken out loans to pay maxed-out credit card bills, he turned to an RCMP expense fund he controlled, stealing over $10,000. The end grew near after a transfer to Windsor, where he would visit the casino daily, before work, during his shifts and after.
An audit finally uncovered the thefts, he was charged, convicted and thrown off the force.
''The worst thing I had to do was tell my daughter [now 12] that she might read something in the newspaper about me, that I had stolen money,'' he says.
No one at the casinos where he was a regular -- including the security staff with whom he worked -- ever suggested he cool the habit. ''The casinos ... don't care about compulsive gamblers,'' he said.
Jack finally sought help from the Windsor Region Problem Gambling Service and has started a new life, with a management job in an automotive-related business.
Until about a decade ago, the opportunity for people like him to gamble in Canada was limited. Bingo halls, lottery tickets, charity casinos and trips to Las Vegas were about it. But then provincial governments, under pressure to cut taxes and spur on sluggish economies, discovered gambling's allure and built a powerful gaming industry. Canadians can play now at 50 permanent casinos, 21,000 machines and 38,000 VLTs.
A parallel industry has also sprung up. Dozens of gambling addiction agencies welcome a steady supply of clients, backed by a fledgling community of gaming researchers. Estimates of the number of people with gambling problems varies, although most experts agree at least 4% of the population may be affected. Pathological gamblers, the ones who might turn to crime to support their habit, are a smaller proportion.
Key features of the condition are a tendency to ''chase'' losses -- to keep on gambling in a quixotic attempt to win back lost money -- and then to lie about the mounting debts, said Lisa Root, head of a Niagara-area problem gambling agency. That's usually when the stealing begins, though gamblers tend to delude themselves into thinking they are ''borrowing'' the money and will pay it back when that elusive winning streak finally arrives, she said.
''What else is interesting is the number of women committing these kinds of crimes as a direct result of their gambling problem,'' said Ms. Root. "We're talking about women who are married and employed and have raised families quite successfully and generally are good citizens.''
Barbara Ann Horvath was one of them, a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce employee described as intelligent and charming by one judge, who stole more than $200,000 from her employer and Canada Trust to feed a VLT addiction. In a landmark judgment, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal ruled her acts were those of a ''seriously diseased'' mind and said such thieves should be given some leniency. She ended up with a conditional sentence. But last year Ms. Horvath was back in court, charged with stealing another $64,000 from her new employers to pump money into that same video lottery terminal. This time she was sent to jail for two years less a day. Her husband left her, taking custody of their child.
''My feeling is that if you get rid of the VLTs, you wouldn't have the embezzlement,'' says Staff-Sergeant Chris Oleson, who heads the RCMP's economic crime squad in Saskatchewan.
Not all police have seen evidence that gambling -- like a new cocaine -- is driving the middle classes to felony. A Vancouver police fraud squad spokesman said he's seen no increase in such crimes, though British Columbia is the last province to embrace gaming.
Elsewhere, the evidence is abundant. Detective Mike Kelly of the Windsor police is working on a case involving an employee who stole $4-million from a local manufacturer. ''He said it's all gone to gaming and there is very little hope of recovery.''
Windsor recorded a dramatic case last year, when Carmen Lauzon, a Bank of Montreal manager, was convicted of stealing $1.2-million from the accounts of clients at her branch. Ms. Lauzon got a two-year jail sentence.
Not everyone is convinced by the tearful stories of addiction. Sharon Pratchler, a Crown attorney in Saskatchewan, said she suspects blaming the VLTs has become a too-convenient strategy to avoid prison time.
But some addicts come to the attention of the police even before they have turned to stealing.
''We've had a number of calls,'' says Det. Kelly. ''But there's nothing we can do. They need a credit counsellor or clergy ... It breaks my heart to hear it. Families are being destroyed.''
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