Gambling addict doesn't like how ALC rolls

Gambling addict doesn't like how ALC rolls

A young Saint John man with a severe gambling addiction is slamming Atlantic Lottery's decision to expand its online gaming.

Craig Alexander Schultz is under 12 months' house arrest for stealing his employer's truck and breaking the conditions of his release.

His problems with the law stem from an addiction that he says began as a young teenager while dabbling on the computer at his home in the East Saint John suburb of Forest Hills.

"I know there are a lot of people out there that have the problem, and it just (bugs me) the way that the government wants to make money off it," Schultz, 21, said in an interview. "I can see why they want to legalize it, so they can tax it. But at the same time, they don't do much to stop addiction."

Atlantic Lottery Corporation offers gambling on behalf of the four Atlantic provinces, including New Brunswick. Besides its conventional offerings, it's promoted PlaySphere since 2004, a website where people can play games such as iBingo and Lotto 6/49. More recently, Atlantic Lottery announced it would start offering a new British game, GeoSweep, on its website next winter.

Schultz's case made the news last November after he was arrested in a takedown outside a high-end hotel in the north end. A week after stealing his employer's truck, city police stopped Schultz, with guns drawn, after he pulled into the parking lot of the Chateau Saint John. Police were concerned by a text message sent by Schultz to his ex-girlfriend saying he had a gun. No weapons were found.

Schultz has since been getting his life in order. He says a 30-day stint in jail before sentencing and a program at Ridgewood Addiction Services has helped him stay away from gambling.

But he still feels the need to vent about Atlantic Lottery's offerings.

He says he began playing free online poker at the age of 13 or 14, then soon jumped to Atlantic Lottery's website. He admits to fraudulently using his mother's identity without her permission to play online games. Getting around the lottery corporation's security measures was a joke, he says.

"It's simple. A 10-year-old can do it, you know what I mean? If there's someone's wallet sitting around nearby, you can do it."

His admission of fraud brings into dispute the proper spelling of his family name. He insists it is spelled Schulz, while all court documents refer to him as Schultz.

Describing Atlantic Lottery's website as a stepping stone to more gambling, he soon began playing illegal poker in bars and by the time he was 19, he was driving to Halifax to play at the casino. Within no time, every pay cheque was going toward gambling and he began borrowing to feed the habit.

By the time he was 20, Schultz was out of control, taking more and more crazy gambles to recoup his mounting losses.

"I owed $10,000," he says. "It was definitely people you don't want to owe money to."

While Schultz expressed bitterness about Atlantic Lottery, the corporation said it had taken plenty of steps to prevent youngsters from gambling. Over the last two years, its security department has dealt with an average of 3.5 cases a month in which it appears that attempts have been made to create false accounts using identity theft. When this occurs, such accounts are immediately disabled, a spokesperson said.

"Atlantic Lottery takes responsible gambling very seriously and we have many security checks and balances in place to prevent sale of our products to minors," Sarah McBeath said in an email. "When Atlantic Lottery's transactional website was launched in 2004, we worked with responsible gambling experts from around the world to develop its responsible gambling and social responsibility features and tools."

As part of the security measures, Atlantic Lottery requires new accounts to go through a third-party verification process. If this verification fails for any reason, the applicant is asked to contact Atlantic Lottery and required to provide further documentation to verify their identity.

A letter is also mailed to every person who creates an online account. It instructs them to immediately contact Atlantic Lottery if they did not register for the service.

McBeath added that last year, Atlantic Lottery achieved the highest level of certification available from the World Lottery Association's responsible gaming framework.

"We achieved this by demonstrating that we offer some of the best responsible gambling features and programs in the world and we are committed to their continuous improvement."

Schultz, however, dismissed the security measures. At the very least, he believes everyone who signs up on Atlantic Lottery's website should have to submit to a phone call.

"If they call you and you sound like you're 12 years old," he said, "they're going to know. 'Cause I know when I first signed up on that Atlantic Lotto site, if they'd called they would have known I was a little boy. I definitely don't sound the same as I do today."