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Comment by billmalarky | Hacker News Reader

"Richardson’s employer, Colombo Candy & Tobacco Wholesale. Richardson, the company’s controller, embezzled $4.1 million over the course of two years to support her gambling addiction. (In 2014, Richardson, then 54, was sentenced to 14 to 20 years in prison for the crime.) The thefts ultimately put the company out of business."

So a company based on exploiting human addiction caused another company based on exploiting human addiction to go out of business. I can just barely hear the world's tiniest violin playing the saddest song for them.

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The casino industry is full of contradictions. Steve Wynn's father was a degenerate gambler who died with serious gambling debts. Sheldon Adelson, who has made billions from gambling addiction, has spent millions fighting online gambling. Why? Here's a direct quote [1]:

"[My father] was poor, but he loved to gamble. I saw the cost of a family immersion into losing money on gaming. When I look at people like that, I see the faces of my parents."

Yet he has no issues with taking money from such families on an unprecedented scale - as long as it's in person. You have to be very...."morally flexible"......to work anywhere near the gaming industry. It is built specifically to create and exploit gambling addiction - roughly 50% of revenue comes from 2% of players.

[1] http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2014/10/20/g2e-201...

>Sheldon Adelson, who has made billions from gambling addiction, has spent millions fighting online gambling. Why? Here's a direct quote

I would venture that the main reason he fights against online gambling is so that people that wish to gamble legally need to come to his physical casinos instead.

It's the same reason that online poker is specifically outlined in Washington State - the native American casinos in the state (especially Puyallup) donated a LOT of money to candidates to make that happen.

Same thing from most in-app purchase based games.

and now the taxpayers pay for prosecuting and housing that person for the next 14 years.

(yes, those companies paid taxes too)

Not to mention all of the other employees who lost their jobs.

Personal anecdote: I worked for a similar company (right down to the "[location] Candy and Tobacco" name) for a summer during college. Picking orders in a warehouse and unloading/loading trucks from 5 AM to 5 PM wasn't exactly fun, but it allowed me to buy textbooks the next semester. Worked with a lot of good people, too. Manual labor alongside people from all walks of life puts things in perspective.

I often worked in the cigarette room picking orders and applying tax stamps. When you're doing that sort of work you're not thinking "Oh man, time to ship out more of the poison to suckers today!" you're thinking, "Oh shit, I need to pick 30 cartons of X and get them stamped before the truck leaves in 20 minutes or I'll be in deep shit".

> those companies paid taxes too

Citation needed.

Nicely spotted, I read the article and missed the irony there.

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