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Gambling Crime Doesn’t Pay
10 Sep 2006
An Australian woman was recently arrested and charged with stealing money to pay for her gambling addiction. The moral of the story? Get help as quickly as you can if you think that you have a gambling problem.
An Australian woman learned the hard way that stealing to pay for a gambling habit simply does not pay. The woman stole over $50,000 from her employer over the course of 8 months during 2004, by taking coins from a counting machine. The reason for this theft was that the woman is a gambling addict and stole the money to pay for her gambling habit. Subsequently, she was caught on security camera, charged with fraud and sentenced to two years in jail.
There is, of course, a moral to this story. In a nutshell, stealing to pay for a gambling habit simply does not pay. It should send off very strong warning bells and red lights if you do anything illegal or immoral to pay for your gambling. If you even suspect that you have a gambling problem, seek help immediately. There is no shame in admitting that you have a problem – in fact it takes great courage to admit that we are not invincible and perfect human beings.
Besides outright theft that is fairly obvious, more subtle signs of gambling addiction include, sleeplessness and anxiety, the tendency to lie about your gambling habits and the removal of all traces of fun elements in your gambling sessions.
