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Comment by polartx | Hacker News Reader

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.

The casino is in a tough spot. If it returns any money, it sets a precedent that would turn its industry on its head. It’s also not necessarily fair to its investors, and it would be hard to unwind all the hires, raises, and investments that were made with the fraudulently gambled winnings.

It almost feels like a charity should be established and funded by the casino; a vehicle to right wrongs such as these, without admitting fault/setting a precedent. Heck the casino would even get tax write offs for the charitable donations

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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.

Casinos maybe legally good, but they are ethically/morally bad.

On a related note - I find it funny that I need to be an accredited investor to invest in a huge range of businesses, but I can just walk into a casino and gamble away all my money, even if I am a minimum wage earner. Never understood that part.

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...

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.

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.

I don't think your analogy holds good here. Combat sports is between highly trained professionals, with very strict rules. You don't see a 125 pound man fighting a 250 pound man in UFC, do you? There are no such rules in a casino. Everything in a casino is rigged against its patrons. It is not a level playing field. You can gamble away all your life's earnings in one evening if you wanted to. If there are rules like one cannot gamble more than 5% of their net worth, one cannot continue gambling if they lost x amount of dollars in x amount of time... or something along those lines, then maybe we can compare casinos with combat sports.

Don't forget that gambling is also highly addictive.

We may not like American football, beauty pageants etc. But at least those are level playing fields and not addictive

In some ways, combat sports might be worse. Athletes are gambling with their bodies in return for potential monetary reward, and most don't even make it into the big leagues.

With casinos, at least they only lose money and are unlikely to have to live with lifelong injuries.

You’re missing the point. Athletes are gambling with their health, yes. But they have a 50-50 chance of winning or losing. Casinos are not 50-50. They are rigged against their customers.

I wouldn’t have a problem with gambling if the odds are even.

Also, combat sports are not addictive, gambling is.

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 obsessively playing the poker machines there.

> "She was quiet and pretty much kept to herself. But she was lovely. She would come in at night and would often leave at closing, at 4am," Hannah says.

> "She was one of the big spenders. I was told [by a colleague] she was the number 1 gambler in the club."

> The court heard that a forensic psychologist had found that Clerke suffered from fear and anxiety, and that she played the poker machines to help her cope with her distress.

> As someone who suffered from low self-esteem, Clerke would have appreciated the VIP treatment and attention she received at St Marys Leagues club.

> "Vicki was at the highest level in the rewards program which is called Pink Diamond," says Hannah. "That meant she got VIP service from a personal attendant, free soft drinks and coffee, meals from her rewards points. All those on the top rewards tier are made to feel special."

I used to work next to a company that ran an online gambling site. They were about ten employees, some developers, a few graphic designers and project managers. One of them revealed that almost all their profit came from a dozen whales. One girl who worked there was their chat moderator. Her job was to greet the whales in their virtual lobby, cheer for them when they won and "comfort" them when they lost.

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.

It’s interesting you use the word “casino”.

She wasn’t gambling in a casino. She was gambling in what is essentially a pub that has a large room filled with pokie machines.

This is common across Australia, pubs have dedicated rooms (so called vip rooms) filled with pokie machines as they bring in a lot of money for the owners. Pubs are ripping out dining/general social space and putting in Pokie rooms.

It’s cultural to go have a pint and a bet.

She’s absolutely responsible for stealing but Australia’s obsession with Pokie machines and amount of Pokie machines is also problematic encouraging problem gambling. Pokie machines provide no benefit to anyone except the owners.

Not being Australian born the gambling commercials on tv was also eye opening.

For what it's worth, WA doesn't allow these sorts of clubs or pokies -- and we seem to be doing quite well, thank you. :P

I would prefer to see these sorts of clubs outlawed, and gambling only allowed to take place in licensed casinos, with very strict regulations around checking that the people gambling are doing so with full knowledge and are actually in a position do so...

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 to gambling.

Mandate warning labels like on cigarettes.

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.

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.

I think it would set exactly the right precedent. Anyone else who receives stolen goods, whether knowingly or not, has to give it back, and might be found liable.

So I should require a full investigation of every customer's finances before any purchase?

If you want to make the victim whole, that's what insurance is for.

The courts will do the investigation for you. Why not have insurance on your end, in case the government seizes the money because it wasn't the criminal's to give to you?

If I rob a bank and use a bunch of marked bills to buy a nice dinner, the restaurant doesn’t get to keep that money when the police come knocking, does it?

I'm not saying this as some sort of matter of moral conviction. I can't speak for Australia, but in the U.S., if you are found in possession of stolen property, you have to give it back. And if a prosecutor thinks they can prove you knew or should have known, they can charge you with a crime. I don't see why businesses should get a pass on this when individuals don't.

I wonder if this might unintentionally incentivize _more_ cases of embezzlement. After all, gambling addicts with dysfunctional moral compasses could say, “and if I lose, grandma can still get her money back”. Much in the way that employees/friends/family members justify stealing credit cards because ‘they can just report it as fraud’.

I think this might also incentivize better policy and behavior from casinos, requiring income checks and fraud checkpoints as the gambler spends money

When Madoff was uncovered and investigated, there were clawbacks from the "winners" of such schemes. The clubs here were the "winner" of a scam/fraud, and also were negligent in not cutting off an obvious problem gambler. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. I don't see why they shouldn't be subject to similar clawbacks.

Absolutely should not rely on them setting up a "charity".

> a 4 year sentence is woefully inadequate

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

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