From news items dated March 25 to April 14:

Beverly Howard,  the 53-year-old former director of dining services for a school district in Connecticut, on April 13 pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $350,000 from her employer and giving the money to Foxwoods.
The 67-year-old former head of the Lithuanian Club in Waterbury, CT was sentenced April 8 [...]

A reader writes:

I moved to Vegas for employment and started counting on a part time basis. I probably won 35-40K at blackjack the last couple of years. I lost about $100000 playing negative expectation games, mostly high stakes video poker. It’s better than any drug I have ever tried. Well, [...]

This story reminded me of the skewed distribution of casino and lottery revenue. Viz:

90 percent of casino revenue comes from just 10 percent of customers, according to Foxwoods executive Scott Rider
One sucker accounted for 20 percent of the gambling revenue of Caesars Palace and the Rio for a full year (in 2006)
More than half of [...]

A good business move on multiple levels.

From news items dates March 17 to March 25:

Douglas Nickerson, a former executive with General Casualty Insurance, was sentenced on March 25 to nearly 4 years in prison for embezzling more than $1 million to feed a gambling addiction.
The former treasurer of a Montana Little League team was sentenced to 30 days in jail for [...]

From news items dated March 1 to March 17:

Connie Marie Hanson, 56, was sentenced on March 2 to 55 months in prison for embezzling close to $1 million from disabled veterans for whom she served as fiduciary. Her lawyer said “the loss in this case is directly attributable to her gambling. She took from those [...]

From stories dated Feb. 21 to Feb. 28:

A self-described compulsive gambler, Arthur Bittner, attempted to rob a Colorado bank on Feb. 25. He entered the bank with a shotgun and handed a note to the teller, but lost his nerve and fled without collecting anything. Police soon found Bittner, complete with the gun and the [...]

From news items dated Feb. 9 to Feb. 20:

Rhonda Skiver, 32, pleaded guilty on Feb. 19 to embezzling more than $163,000 from the nursing home of which she was formerly CFO. The money was used for gambling debts and personal expenses.
An Oregon woman, Victoria Monfore, was sent to prison on Feb. 18 for stealing about [...]

From stories dated Jan. 22 to Feb 6., 2010.

Tennessee attorney James M. Hoots was jailed Feb. 5 on charges of embezzling $76,000 from a trust fund for two orphans whose parents died in a murder-suicide. Hoots gambled the money away. He allegedly came clean to a witness,  saying, “I took the children’s money and took [...]

Compulsive gamblers going nuts is again our theme, because they continue going nuts, and because the cumulative effect of the stories of their ongoing nuts-going may prove beneficial someday. I don’t know. But it’s worse out there than you’d think:

A defense attorney for Ausaf “Omar” Siddiqui asked a judge on Dec. 23 to dismiss [...]

Happy new year, they say. I’ll believe that when I see it. The times are as dark as we’ve known. Those of us not killing ourselves are eating the people who are. Life, in America, is not good. We’re either hoopleheads or burglars. Saints are rare. Decency is inconceivable. I get in a van this [...]

Merry Christmas, winners! We are all champions. We should love ourselves. We are taller than average, strong of heart, curious of intellect, not balding (so much), we jog almost once every week. We are the reason America rules over the moon. Did you know they use the US dollar in Panama in lieu of their [...]

Welcome to the fourth installment of This Week In Madness, a lightheared and frequently sickening look at gamblers gone a hair beyond the pale. It distresses me to write these things for you. Once every week I have to spend an hour or two reading and thinking about suicide attempts, bankruptcies, devastated lives, and remembering [...]

You don’t have to gamble badly and if you do gamble badly you don’t have to gamble badly through all your available funds and then embezzle from your boss, from your clients if you are a lawyer, from the Little League if you are a Little League president in Oklahoma, from the campaign funds of [...]

Again this week: people gambled. Some lost, went to Dark Realms of the Psyche and made headlines for it. So we’re back with a second installment of our continuing series. Whee.

Kay Frances Thorn was given a suspended a sentence and ordered to pay restitution of $117,548.78 after pleading guilty to felony embezzlement from the Taylor [...]

Here is what the Terry Watanabe case means. Watanabe is the Omaha philanthropist who vaporized (he says) $112 million gambling with great enthusiasm in Vegas, primarily at Harrah’s-owned Caesars (sic) Palace in 2007. He was living in comped digs at the casino. He was drinking and drinking and keeping his head straight by taking the [...]

A tribal casino in Kansas is excusing itself from the business of keeping gambling addicts off its premises, the Topeka Capital-Journal reports:
The three tribal-owned casinos in the area had maintained a list of people who, in an effort to control their addiction, banned themselves from the gaming floors. If someone on the list [...]

Gambling is fun either as a lark or as a test of wits or as a dalliance with forces bigger and more brutal than you are, or sometimes as all three. Now and again the dallying gets to be hardcore. A chord gets struck; a patsy falls into a rut. And suddenly the limits are [...]

Sucker/(former?) rich person Terry Watanabe lost $112 million at Caesars Palace and the Rio during a months-long alcohol-and-prescription-pain-killer-fueled bender in which he lived in comped suites at the two Harrah’s properties, seldom left Vegas or saw the outdoors, gambled in near-solitude in private salons considerably more exclusive than your run-of-the-mill high-limit room, often gambling hour [...]

30 January 2009By Mark Lavery
A MANAGER addicted to gambling axed open fruit machines in the Leeds casino where he worked and stole £44,000.
Hours later Andrew Barnett walked into a police station, handed over all but £100 of the cash and gave himself up.
Leeds Crown Court heard Barnett, 37, had worked for Grosvenor Casinos for five [...]

Vail Daily NewsPete FowlerDecember 28, 2008
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado — A man suspected of robbing the Alpine Bank in West Glenwood Springs and taking the cash to Las Vegas has a history of gambling addiction and stealing to support it.
Police arrested Jeffrey David Smith, 27, Monday afternoon at a hotel in Las Vegas on suspicion of [...]