I can only imagine the hysteria if online poker had been this woman’s habit:

A Long Island mom blew up to $6,000 a day on lottery tickets - an out-of-control addiction she fueled by embezzling $2.3 million from her bosses, authorities said yesterday.

By day, Annie Donnelly, 38, a bookkeeper and mother of three from Farmingville, wrote checks to herself and for cash at her medical office job.

By night, she would buy huge strips of $10 and $20 scratch-off tickets and thousands of dollars in lottery tickets on her way home - usually stopping at the same shop.

This line jumped out at me:

Gambling experts say lottery splurges are among the most common types of compulsive gambling.

And yet the states spend millions promoting their own lotteries, while sending SWAT teams after anyone who dares to challenge their monopoly over games of chance.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 26th, 2006 at 4:58 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Gambling, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.