A case of particularly aggravated theft hit the headlines in Australia this week. An Australian travel agency employee is said to have cheated two employers and their customers out of a total of 628,598 AUS. With the money she played online slot machines and financed her gambling addiction, reports the News channel ABC [Seite auf Englisch].
The 58-year-old mother of two gradually diverted the funds from canceled trips between April 2018 and September 2020. Instead of reimbursing the money already paid by the customers, she transferred them to her own account.
However, the amounts never stayed there for long because they gambled away almost all of the money in the online casino. At her first trial in the Victoria State District Court earlier this week, she was remorseful. She had the following words recited through her lawyer:
I sincerely want to apologize for the theft and the much pain I have caused. I am devastated and regretful for the abuse of trust, financial hardship, worry and shame I have caused by my stupid, wrongful actions.
The travel agent had struggled with her gambling addiction for years. When she was no longer able to finance her addiction with short-term loans, she began to divert smaller sums from the agency. But the sum grew quickly and grew to almost AUD 630,000 in a total of 522 transactions.
After her employer discovered what she had done, she began to repay part of the money and to agree smaller installments with various customers. You wanted to settle the matter “internally” and without police investigations. Ultimately, however, she was only able to repay AUD 22,500. The legal process was therefore inevitable.
Richter is outraged by online gambling
For the judge, however, neither her apology nor her efforts to repay the stolen funds were sufficient to make amends for her deed. At the end of the first day of the negotiation, he had found harsh words. However, these were directed less against the perpetrator than against the operators of online gambling:
We are in a society whose government has decided this evil [gemeint sind Spielautomaten; Anm. d. Verf.] to open the doors and allow it to live on the community and millions of their dollars. To allow people to use these online is an abomination beyond compare.
What makes the theft of funds all the worse is the fact that the online gambling operators alone have enriched themselves. In the end, all victims, except for the operators of the respective websites, the judge continued.
The verdict, which should be announced within this month, could still be harsh, according to ABC. Due to the severity of the theft, the accused would face a prison sentence of several years.
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