Online Gambling Addiction Leads to Crime

March 14, 2009

A Royal Mail worker had been caught stealing to feed her online gambling addiction to bingo and slot machines. Patricia Barnes was unable to resist the lure of online gambling and stole more than �75,000 from the special delivery post handled at the Norwich sorting office that she worked at.

Barnes had worked for the company for fourteen years and was caught when the company became suspicious. They realized that there was less money coming to the finance center � money that should have been coming, so they set up a surveillance operation and discovered Barnes. When searched she was found with items on her person that she had stolen from them.

She said that she took them because the way they were marked usually meant that there would be cash in them, and therefore she would be able to play at the online gambling with the money that was in them. The prosecuting attorney said that she admitted that she had an online gambling problem and could not figure out how to stop She said that between the months of April 2007 and June of the next year she had taken �74,425 in cash and �987 in checks.

The problem is that she is not alone in her plight. The UK is finding a rise among housewives and students stealing to feed an online gambling addiction of some sort. They say that they are unable to stop online gambling, and so they start to steal to feed the habit and/or to replace the money that they have spent on it already.







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