CT: Spectrum Gaming Report #12 Crime

Crime: Embezzlements
No other state that reported 40 or more embezzlements in 1992 has had a higher percentage increase than Connecticut‘s 397 percent rise from that year to 2005. The state‘s increase is nearly 10 times that of the national average.
– page 142 Spectrum Gaming Group (SGG)
“Gambling in Connecticut” 2009


The embezzlements come with a heavy price tag. Embezzlers often face stiff prison terms. Their lives, and the lives of their families, are ruined. The businesses they leave behind often go bankrupt.

On August 3, 2007, three defendants appeared before Superior Court Judge Susan Handy to plead guilty to embezzlement charges that had a casino connection. The judge noted that she had seen far too many of these cases. She said there was a ―template for the defendants:
Female, typically middle-aged and older, who, up until now, had lived an exemplary life.
– page 143 Spectrum Gaming Group (SGG) “Gambling in Connecticut” 2009


Kevin O‘Connor was the state‘s US Attorney from 2002 to April 2007.
. . O‘Connor said he noticed a spike in embezzlements shortly after he took
office. “The FBI is spending a considerable amount of time on these cases,”
O‘Connor said, noting he became so concerned over the number of cases that he
instructed his press officer to indicate in press releases whether gambling
played a role in the embezzlement.

“It wasn‘t just embezzlements,” O‘Connor said of the casino-related crime that was prosecuted on the federal level. “It was fraud, bank robberies and thefts as well. And over and over, we would learn that they were done to feed a gambling habit.”

Some of those non-embezzlement crimes included a Massachusetts woman, who was losing up to $3,000 a week at Foxwoods. She robbed three banks in Brookline, Massachusetts in 2001.
– page 145-146 Spectrum Gaming Group (SGG) “Gambling in Connecticut”
2009


No one knows better than Lawrence Tytla that embezzlements have
been on the rise. He is the Supervisory Assistant State‘s Attorney for New
London County. Tytla first started with the office in 1988. The motive then, he
noted, for embezzlements was to feed a drug habit; today it is to feed a
gambling habit.

Tytla said he is stunned by the type of people committing the embezzlements in southeastern Connecticut. “These are people that almost always never had a criminal record,” he noted. “They are upstanding citizens who gained the trust of their employers, who never suspected that they could have been victimized this way. They think they are the only ones this has happened to. What‘s astonishing is the magnitude of the embezzlements and how long they go undetected.”
– page 145-146 Spectrum Gaming Group (SGG)
“Gambling in Connecticut” 2009