Gambling Debts At Casinos

A man who regularly won and lost millions in a night at London casinos won again yesterday when the high court upheld his refusal to pay 2m in gambling debts after he cancelled a cheque because he disliked the croupier at Aspinall s and considered the game unfair. But Fouad al-Zayat, a Syrian-born, Cyprus-based businessman nicknamed the Fat Man, failed in a claim to force the casino to return a further 10.5m losses. He will have to pay his own costs, which are enormous after almost two years of legal actions. Yesterday Mr Justice Teare repeated the judge s comment from an earlier hearing: This is one of those cases which have everything to do with law and nothing to do with justice.

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The dispute between Aspinall s and one of its most lucrative clients dates back to a Friday night in March 2000 when Zayat settled down to a game of blackjack. He was well known at the club: he first started playing there in 1994, and over more than 600 visits bought 91m in gaming chips and lost more than 23m.

That night he lost steadily, and by the small hours of Saturday was more than 2m down, his worst losses in a single game. At one point he asked for the croupier to be changed, but was told none other was available.

When he discovered that there had been another croupier on duty, he was enraged and told his bank to stop the cheque; when the casino tried to bank it the following Tuesday, it bounced. Aspinall s, reluctant to lose its whale - as the highest-stake gamblers are known - delayed proceeding against him for almost six years, during which he lost another 10.6m. Not surprisingly he was regarded by the club as an important client who demanded and was shown respect, said the judge.

The casino won an initial judgment that he must pay up, and assets including a personal jet were temporarily frozen. However, Zayat then won the right to launch the appeal which was upheld yesterday, on the grounds that in delaying attempting to recover the debt, the club had in effect given him credit, which is illegal under the Gaming Act. His additional claim for the return of his subsequent losses - when the club allowed him to buy chips using third-party cheques or debit cards - was thrown out.

There was no official response from the club yesterday, but Andrew Herd, one of the directors, said it would be considering the judgment carefully.

The Fat Man has not been seen there recently, nor as far as Aspinall s knows at any of the other London casinos which were once his haunts.

There was no response from Zayat either. However, last year, in one of only a handful of interviews he has ever given, he explained why he was fighting the debt: Casinos give a service, and if the service is not good, considering the price which you are paying, then you do not pay. If you go to a restaurant and you do not like the food, you do not pay. If you go to the whorehouse and do not get the pleasure you were seeking, you do not pay.Debts can soon spiral out of control if you are gambling more than you earn. Most people do not have much money left over after paying bills, rent or mortgage payments and other living costs, especially if they have children, so a gambling addiction can make a huge difference to the amount of money available each month. As the addiction becomes more advanced, gamblers will find that they try other avenues to try and raise money for gambling, aside from their monthly wage and they may take out loans, use credit cards, borrow money from friends or relatives and in extreme cases, steal. If you fall into debt you will find that other areas of your life become affected. Your relationships with others may become strained, you may start to feel anxious about dealing with debt collectors, which may make you jumpy whenever the phone rings or there is a knock at the door and you will find that other areas of your life, such as your social life and performance at work, become hampered.

The more debt you get into the harder it is to deal with, especially if people around you have no idea that you are in a lot of debt due to gambling.

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Soon you could be completely out of your depth and struggling to find ways to pay off even small proportions of your overall debt. As you fall in to more debt, it can become increasingly tempting to try and win money back. However, the odds will always be stacked against you and continuing to gamble will only plunge you further into debt. Make a change If you find yourself in debt and you want help to start paying it off and cut down on gambling, try to be honest and up front with the people around you and take steps to regain control of your finances. Ask someone close to you to take control of your bank cards and bank account while you get yourself together, and destroy credit cards to remove temptation.

Try to make lists and stick to a strict monthly budget. You can seek help from a professional debt service, such as the National InsolvencyA large casino may be stuck with more than $10 million every year in bum checks and bounced markers. How to collect? Debt collectors often make their money by, well, collecting debts.

They are not paid by the hour, but depend for their livelihood upon their ability to extract money from reluctant customers. In the past, this sometimes led to problems. Debt collection is consistently one of the top consumer complaints. In 1977 the United States Congress found there is abundant evidence of the use of abusive, deceptive, and unfair debt collection practices by many debt collectors. It reacted by passing the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

The Act spells out what outside debt collectors can and cannot do.

Some are obvious, such as not threatening violence. Others are more complicated and technical, such as normally not making phone calls after 9:00 pm or before 8:00 am and not revealing that the call is for collection of a debt if someone other than the debtor or his family answers the phone. A debt collector who makes a mistake is violating federal law. Does this Act apply to casinos? How about their lawyers? The question is of more than academic interest.

The stakes are high.

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First, of course, there is the money. Legal gaming operations directly lend billions of dollars each year to their patrons, and have to chase down hundreds of millions of dollars that are not paid back in time.

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission, created by Congress, asked me to do a study in 1998 on credit and the casino industry. I found that the 12 casinos in Atlantic City that year issued approximately $2.13 billion in counter-checks, markers, to their patrons.

This means that, in just this one city, players borrow more than $2 billion each year from casinos.

This does not include personal checks written directly to the casinos or to others, or, most importantly, patrons use of credit cards, ATMs or other forms of credit used to get cash to gamble. Most patrons were able to pay off most of their loans by the end of their trips and the markers were canceled as paid in full. Players redeemed more than $1.58 billion in markers prior to deposit. For some, however, luck was not as kind.

So $543,174,000 in markers remained unpaid after the players had left the casinos. Most of this money was recovered through the normal procedure of depositing the markers for collection through the banking system: The casinos collected $424,400,000 from the players banks in this way.

This means that $118,774,000 bounced. Having to chase down more than $100 million in bad debts every year turns casinos and their lawyers into major collection agencies.

Successful collection agencies, I might add. Casinos eventually collected more than $91 million of these bum markers.

So, of $2 billion lent by Atlantic City casinos, only 1.3% was not repaid.

Still, that means $28 million had to be written off. Obviously some of these bum markers are from people who cannot pay. But some of10:34 AM PT - TMZ Sports has now obtained the original criminal complaint filed against Tarver in Nevada in 2013 .

Which shows he was charged with fraud and theft for taking out the money in 2012 and never paying it back. According to the criminal complaint, both charges are felonies .

Which means Tarver could be facing some real slammer time. Former boxing champ Antonio Tarver never paid back $200,000 in gambling markers to the Wynn Las Vegas from a gambling binge in 2012 .

So says a lawsuit obtained by TMZ Sports.

Tarver was arrested in Florida over the weekend on a warrant out of Nevada - the arrest documents were vague about the nature of the alleged offense. Now, we know .

Tarver is the target of a criminal investigation for allegedly not settling several gambling markers he took at the Wynn during a 4-day gambling binge in July 2012. According to the Wynn, Tarver took out $50k on July 24, 2012 . Another $50k on July 26 . And $100k on July 27 .

Totaling $200k. Besides the criminal investigation, Wynn is also suing Tarver for the cash in civil court in Nevada .

Collection Agency Gambling Debt?im 20 years old and i make more than everyone else i know from my full-time job. and yet im in a bigger hole than everyone else. i am an action gambler and i need 2 stop. but im in 2 much debt 2 st.

Isn't gambling really dancing with the devil?I saw some chicks on the basketball gamble, and I knew a guy who gambled and had alot of debt, but he wasn't in college. Is this a smart idea? I don't know how to play any of those games. I.

When you use a credit card to gamble at a casino, does it count as a cash advance?Hi, I'm 24 and started gambling when I was around 17 or 18, I've been gambling ever since and have lost more than I win, total lost of about 80 thousand and the worst thing is that I can't seem to .

Do i have to pay online gambling debt?About 8 years ago i used a credit card to gamble online overseas. I still am several thousands of dollars in debt. Since the transaction was coded for a casino do i have to pay the bill?

In the USA are gambling debts the same as any other debts?Or is there a legal difference?Alright. My situation is that i wagered online at this online gambling site that is based in Costa Rica. They give everyone $1000 credit to bet with without no deposit. But i emailed them my Driver.

Anyone gamble or go to casinos to pay off college debts?I asked this question recently and I don't think any of you understood. All I did was use the credit that the casino gave me. I gambled away $232,000 then they gave me $200,000 in credit and .

Gambling problem and debt?

Can a casino actually send me to jail for not paying back gambling debt?

Gambling addict, debt problems, lost thousands?it just seems to me like gambling is fun when you make money but it really really sucks when you lose money, so why bother gambling when you know there's a chance you'll be in the poorhouse.