Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M • Hacker News Board

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#41

Post by fuzxi » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:03 AM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #28

lupire wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make gambling losses refundable unless the bettor posts a bond in advance. Only allow one purchase of chips per day. This prevents bleeding people drip by drip, while still allowing gambling. Mandate that all chips display actual cash value. Require signed disclosures with big warnings about the risks and costs of gambling, every time chips are purchased , like required on mortgages. Apply Accredited Investor rules t…

They’ll never do that, that would spoil their business. They’re in the business of enabling addicts bleed dry

I believe the implication is that these should be law, not internal policy.

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#42

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:49 AM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #15

polartx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone can agree that the employee is the #1 scumbag in this story. I think a 4 year sentence is woefully inadequate for someone who effectively stole her employers retirement years, years he cannot replace. Some blame can be assigned the business owner. How can you go so many years without a 3rd party audid, or Some kind of second opinion to your finances? Though trust shouldn’t be so harshly criticized. T…

I think the casino is the #1 scumbag not the employee. The employee was a gambling addict and the casino willingly exploited her addiction: > Clerke is now in prison and none of her close relatives would talk to ABC Investigations for this story. The closest we can get to understanding her behaviour is through what was said in court, and through Hannah*, a gaming attendant who worked in the club back when Clerke was…

[deleted]

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#43

Post by wombatmobile » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 4:56 AM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #26

polartx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many vices in the world. The underlying commonality is that they’re all addictive. In spite of that, I don’t subscribe to the belief that their addictive qualities exonerate their participants. Nor does it transform thieves, addicts, or delinquents into victims.

I wouldn’t hold the casino wholly responsible but it shares part of the responsibility nonetheless.

It's not a casino, it is a community club.

Patrons have to apply for membership.

The club could deduce just from this woman's address that she didn't have $XX million available to her for gambling - if it were even trying 1% to spot problem gamblers.

In the case of St Mary's,

> The not-for-profit community club has over $85 million in net assets.

That's crazy! It is a suburban football club!

Well, clearly, it isn't. Clearly, it is an entirely different form of enterprise, disguised as something it isn't.

Clubs that do this are protected from consequences by governments that won't introduce legislation because of reasons that I can't write without having the resources to defend against a spurious defamation action that would bankrupt me.

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#44

Post by wombatmobile » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:04 AM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #32

geenew wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite get how the loss could have such an effect. The article says "She hid her theft by creating dummy bills for suppliers and paying the money directly into her account." If I'm reading this correctly, fake bills were created and entered as expenses, which were then paid from the company bank account. If so, wouldn't the losses have shown up on the income statement? That would mean that the owner had the sa…

If I understand correctly this went on for some years. I still find it hard to comprehend how it went undetected for so long. But it did happen so it’s clearly possible

The article says her losses were $3.7m, but the amount she gambled far greater.

> Mr Zeuschner has calculated that Clerke would have put a staggering $20 million through the poker machines at St Marys over the 17 years she was stealing money from his business.

Perhaps she was repatriating the winnings, and so the signal of her losses were masked over time.

$3.7m over 17 years = $218,000 per year.

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#45

Post by cozzyd » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #16

akudha wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s also not necessarily fair to its investors Maybe not fair. But they invested their money into a business whose business model is to rip off its customers. They could have invested in a thousand other businesses that actually produce something useful to the society, yet they chose to put their money into a business which removes clocks on its premises so people would stay longer and gamble more and lose more. Cas…

I’m largely convinced that the accredited investor rules are there to gatekeep the best / most lucrative investments and limit them to the already rich club. No other explanation makes sense when you also consider that casinos exist.

To be fair, casinos are not legal in many (most?) places in the US...

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#46

Post by tartoran » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

fuzxi wrote: post #41

tartoran wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ll never do that, that would spoil their business. They’re in the business of enabling addicts bleed dry

I believe the implication is that these should be law, not internal policy.

Yes but casinos have lots of money to constantly lobby and enable the way of addiction one way or another. There are lots of addicts in casinos, I'm not saying that most of them are but quite a bit of casino frequenters are addict and any changes in legislation that would make these people not come back would reduce income which in turn would reduce taxes and so on. One hand scratches the other. Education is the only alternative I see to help people not fall into the gambling trap.

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#47

Post by cozzyd » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:29 AM UTC

polartx wrote: post #7

noodlesUK wrote: post #2

I don’t know what the solution is, but gambling (and particularly online gambling and video gambling) is a scourge on our society. I don’t think it should be outlawed, because adults should be free to make bad choices if they want to, but the level to which it is exploitive and harmful needs to be reduced. Does anyone have any good answers here?

I think everyone can agree that the employee is the #1 scumbag in this story. I think a 4 year sentence is woefully inadequate for someone who effectively stole her employers retirement years, years he cannot replace. Some blame can be assigned the business owner. How can you go so many years without a 3rd party audid, or Some kind of second opinion to your finances? Though trust shouldn’t be so harshly criticized. T…

> a 4 year sentence is woefully inadequate

yeah, she should get a sentence commensurate with financial-crisis-causing wall street bankers. oh wait...

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#48

Post by aeternum » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

akudha wrote: post #12

polartx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone can agree that the employee is the #1 scumbag in this story. I think a 4 year sentence is woefully inadequate for someone who effectively stole her employers retirement years, years he cannot replace. Some blame can be assigned the business owner. How can you go so many years without a 3rd party audid, or Some kind of second opinion to your finances? Though trust shouldn’t be so harshly criticized. T…

it’s also not necessarily fair to its investors Maybe not fair. But they invested their money into a business whose business model is to rip off its customers. They could have invested in a thousand other businesses that actually produce something useful to the society, yet they chose to put their money into a business which removes clocks on its premises so people would stay longer and gamble more and lose more. Cas…

Couldn't this be argued for a lot of things: boxing / UFC is legal but fighting is ethically/morally bad and should not be encouraged, celebrated, or promoted. American football is legal but has pretty horrific long-term effects on the human brain. Beauty pageants, the list goes on.

You're right about the accredited investor double-standard though, hopefully that gets removed soon.

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#49

Post by aeternum » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 6:04 AM UTC

thebean11 wrote: post #35

lupire wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make gambling losses refundable unless the bettor posts a bond in advance. Only allow one purchase of chips per day. This prevents bleeding people drip by drip, while still allowing gambling. Mandate that all chips display actual cash value. Require signed disclosures with big warnings about the risks and costs of gambling, every time chips are purchased , like required on mortgages. Apply Accredited Investor rules t…

Those all seem reasonable-ish (maybe a bit draconian) except: > Apply Accredited Investor rules to gambling. Sorry, you should not need to earn $200k per year or be a millionaire to go blow a few hundred bucks at a casino. That's crazy.

Yes, but maybe there should be a cap based on income, especially if the person claims dependents.

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#50

Post by tjs8rj » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 6:24 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #16

akudha wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s also not necessarily fair to its investors Maybe not fair. But they invested their money into a business whose business model is to rip off its customers. They could have invested in a thousand other businesses that actually produce something useful to the society, yet they chose to put their money into a business which removes clocks on its premises so people would stay longer and gamble more and lose more. Cas…

I’m largely convinced that the accredited investor rules are there to gatekeep the best / most lucrative investments and limit them to the already rich club. No other explanation makes sense when you also consider that casinos exist.

I'd agree with this. Although in the US there was recently added another exemption to become an accredited investor: passing a knowledge test.

What interested me was: republicans are in support of removing accredited investor status making your same argument that it bars the masses from lucrative investments, while democrats fought allowing a test to qualify investors for accredited status, arguing that the masses would expose themselves to too much risk.

Is this a personal liberty vs authoritarian take? Is this a personal liberty vs empathetic (though paternalistic) take? Is this a quiet "let's exploit investors" vs "prevent investor exploitation" take?

For some reason their positions have me stumped.