#gambling-addiction

#gambling-addiction

Gambling debt scandals are cautionary tales, often in the worst way possible. They show how quickly addiction can derail lives and erase fortunes, not to mention break up families and ruin relationships. Whether the person in question is an athlete, executive, lawyer or heir, they all seem to fall into the same pattern where losses compound and desperate attempts to recover the money or conceal its loss usually fail.

Sam Badcock was 23 when he lost 100 a birthday gift from his brother on a gambling machine. I sprinted back to my room, grabbed the rest of the money and sprinted back to that machine as fast as I could, he says. Back then, Sam was playing 100-a-spin fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), which offered digital roulette. Described as the crack cocaine of gambling, uproar about their addictive nature led to FOBTs being effectively banned in 2019.

In the first hour or so, most of the pro-casino people said their bit and left; their talking points were uniform and matter-of-fact, about creating jobs and bringing more people to the area. All the passion, with few exceptions, was coming from the antis. One of those folks told me - and it was reported elsewhere, too, and seemingly caught on an audio recording - that a lot of the pro-casino speakers had been paid with $80 gift cards in exchange for making some noise.

As an employee of the popular Chinese food chain living in Mexico, Salamanca-Benitez was "in the throes of a gambling addiction" and struggling to make ends meet, his attorney wrote in court filings. His solution was to broker several high-end methamphetamine deals over the phone, leading to a drug courier taking a total of 30 pounds of the drug to an undercover DEA agent in San Jose and Redwood City, court records show.

The buyer's guilt that I get nearly every time after I've spent is insane ... Sometimes I open things and I don't want them.

Karen's story reflects the alarming rise of problem gambling in Brazil since the legalization of online gambling, with minimal protections for consumers.