It turns out Patrice Tierney will be going to jail after all. The wife of U.S. Representative John Tierney (D-MA) was sentenced yesterday to 30 days in prison followed by five months house arrest. In doing so, the judge rejected the sentencing recommendation of the prosecution and the deal they struck with Mrs. Tierney.

Last year, Mrs. Tierney agreed to plead guilty to four counts of aiding her brother with the filing of false tax returns in exchange for a lighter sentence. She had also been charged with money laundering, racketeering and running an illegal gambling business. She cooperated with the prosecution in a case that also involved two of her brothers, Robert Eremian and Daniel Aremian. There were 422 criminal counts charged in total against five people, including Mrs. Tierney.

Yesterday, during the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge William G. Young rejected Tierney’s deal with the prosecution, imposing the harsher sentence. It seemed that Young was making a point that the politically connected, like Mrs. Tierney, are not above the law. Judge Young said that he “cannot excuse a violation of the law of this severity.”

When her attorney insisted that Ms. Tierney was a good person who had simply made a mistake, the judge said that “people aren’t guilty of tax crimes because they make mistakes.” He then reminded Ms. Tierney that she was still getting a light sentence, since he could have sent her to prison for six months.

Patrice Tierney’s brother, Robert, ran an online gambling business in Antigua, where he relocated after his illegal gambling business in Massachusetts was raided in 1996. Patrice Tierney had traveled to Antigua to help her other brother, Daniel, care for his family and run his business, which involved collecting gambling debts for Robert. The money they made from the gambling business was sent to relatives in the United States. Patrice Tierney, who did the taxes and financial paperwork, reported that money as commissions, never disclosing the true source of the income.

Players holding any $25,000 chips from the Bellagio have until April 22 to redeem them for cash. After that, the chips will be worthless. It is all due to the December 14 robbery, when an unknown man wearing a motorcycle helmet entered the Bellagio and robbed it of chips at gunpoint. The robber is believed to have stolen $1.5 million worth of chips in varying denominations, but many of them are believed to be the Bellagio’s most expensive chip, the $25,000 variety.

Casino chips, of course, only have value within that casino. They are not legal tender. Often players, especially high rollers, will take chips with them rather than cashing in immediately for tax purposes. They then cash in the chips gradually. Anyone hoarding $25,000 chips from the Bellagio must cash them in soon or lose the money, though.

The $25,000 chips that were stolen were red with a gray inlay. As soon as the robber left and the casino conducted an inventory, they replaced the chips with a different series. MGM Resorts International, which owns the Bellagio, has posted a notice about the series of chips being discontinued in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Nevada law requires the casino to post a notice to the public, notify regulators, and give gamblers a reasonable amount of time to cash any chips they still have.

It is not uncommon for casinos to discontinue certain chips. In this case, the hope is to avoid the bandit actually making money off of the Bellagio. Anyone who walks into the casino between now and April 22 with a stack of $25,000 chips will be thoroughly questioned. Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Resports, told the AP that “it’s pretty unusual for someone we don’t know to come strolling up with a handful of $25,000 chips.”

If the robber is caught trying to cash in illegally obtained chips, he will be arrested. If he does not redeem them before the deadline, those chips are worthless. In addition to discontinuing that series of chip, the casino also has other safeguards used to track high-value chips. Exactly what those safeguards are, as you can imagine, has not been disclosed.

It’s not exactly news when Democrat politicians are involved in tax evasion, corruption and fraud. Really the only thing that makes the Patrice Tierney case worth mentioning is the racketeering charge. Otherwise, it’s old news.

Patrice Tierney, the wife of Massachusetts U.S. Representative John Tierney, will plead guilty to charges of racketeering, money laundering and running an illegal gambling business. She was recently named in an indictment that involves two of her brothers, Robert Eremian and Daniel Eremian. In total, the group was indicted on 422 counts involving five people. Patrice Tierney faces up to three years in prison as well as fines totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to the indictment, Patrice Tierney traveled to Antigua, where she helped her brother, Daniel, care for his family and seemed to be involved in his business. Part of that business was collecting debts for online gambling businesses owned by Robert Eremian. Much of the money made by the gambling businesses in Antigua was paid out to relatives in the United States. Tierney admitted to paying her brother’s taxes, reporting earnings from the gambling business as “commissions” rather than “illegal gambling” income.

Though the U.S. Attorney’s office has not proved that Tierney knew Eremian’s business was illegal, she has admitted full responsibility for being “willfully blind” to what he was doing. Most likely, it was a situation where she knew the income could not have been coming from where her brother said, but she was unwilling to question him.

In addition to the current indictment, Robert Eremian has a history of tax evasion dating back to 2002. Again, Democrats and their families not paying taxes is kind of par for the course. Patrice Tierney is pleading guilty and cooperating with the investigation in order to receive leniency.

No direct connection between the alleged crimes and Congressman John Tierney has been made. The Massachusetts seven-term Congressman faces Republican Bill Hudak in his re-election campaign this November.

Here at Gambling Review, we always urge you to gamble responsibly. I have said more times than I can count that you should never gamble money that you can’t afford to lose. Perhaps I should be more specific. That does not mean you should steal money from other people to gamble with. That’s exactly what a slimeball insurance broker named Daniel Trolaro did, according to authorities.

Trolaro used to work as a insurance broker for Prudential Insurance Company of America. Aside from his day job, he enjoys playing games at online casinos, but figured he would enjoy them a lot more if he could somehow spend someone else’s money instead of his own. The genius then decided to defraud nine of his clients, stealing approximately $1.9 million, and use that money at the online casinos.

A New Jersey grand jury indicted Trolaro on one count of first-degree financial facilitation of criminal activity – in this case, money laundering, eight counts of second-degree theft by failure to make required disposition of property, and two counts of third-degree theft by failure to make required disposition of property.

According to the indictment, Trolaro bilked nine of his clients out of sums ranging from $46,000 to $910,000 from June 2008 until February of this year. At that time, an internal investigation by Prudential uncovered his wrongdoing and Trolaro was fired. Prudential then referred the matter to state authorities. According to a Prudential spokesman, Trolaro “misappropriated multiple clients’ funds withdrawn from their checking accounts, savings accounts, annuity contracts and/or brokerage accounts for his own benefit and borrowed money from several clients without firm approval.”

The good news is that I haven’t heard anyone use the “gambling addiction” excuse yet. “Oh, he has a gambling problem. That’s why he had to steal from his clients!” Though there are people with gambling problems, more often than not it’s simply a convenient excuse. In this case, like in many, greed, stupidity and selfishness seemed to be the largest factors at play – not gambling addiction.

Here at Gambling Review, we recognize that most gamblers are fine, upstanding citizens who are wise with their money and simply want to have a good time at the casino. We would be remiss, though, if we didn’t mention the handful of idiots out there who probably shouldn’t ever set foot in a casino or log onto an online casino.

That handful of idiots includes people caught cheating at blackjack, people who embezzle money from their employer to fund their gambling habit, people who rob casino dealers and more. In this case, it’s a woman who decided that playing some casino games was more important than the safety of her children.

Though the ballots for Mother of the Year have not yet been tabulated, it’s a safe bet that Sharon Balek won’t be the winner. The 35-year-old mother of two left her children – ages eight and fifteen – in the car for almost six hours while she was busy gambling at Parx Casino.

Balek was too busy playing her favorite slots in the Bensalem, Pennsylvania casino to worry about a little thing like her children. Balek drove her children to the casino at approximately 6:30 PM and left them in the car to go play some slots. Leaving her kids in the parking lot wasn’t a big deal because it was for a short time – only six hours. At around 12:30 AM, the teenage child flagged down a passerby and borrowed a cell phone to call their father. It was a short time after that that Sharon Balek found herself in police custody. Her excuse for child abandonment? She “lost track of time.”

This should go without saying, but Mrs. Balek has a problem. I don’t know if she has a gambling addiction or anything like that, but she definitely suffers from one affliction: stupidity. If I felt the urge to go play the slots at the local casino and needed a place to put my kids for six hours or more, the casino parking lot would be pretty low on that list. At home with a babysitter, with their other parent with relatives or at a friend’s house would be options I look at first.

So here is my advice to you. If you have such a strong urge to play casino games that you can’t find somewhere safe for your children to be first, then do everyone a favor and go see a judge and tell him that. The judge will be happy to remove the children from your custody and then you can gamble any time you want without worrying about them.

Needless to say, Sharon Belek was arrested for child endangerment.

What? The president of a labor union used his power for his own benefit, without regard for what’s best for the union members? Who could imagine such a thing?

Okay, I will try to contain my pretend shock throughout the rest of this post (though I can make no guarantees). On Wednesday, Daniel Hughes, the former president of the Port Authority Field Association, pleaded guilty to using nearly $300,000 in union funds to pay for hookers and fund his gambling habit.

This is yet another example of how not to gamble. Do so only with your own money; not with stolen money. We have previously reported on employees who embezzle funds from their employer to fund a gambling habit. This man decided to waste union dues on his.

Though it may not be common (or maybe it is) for union presidents to use dues to pay for prostitutes and casino visits, it is very common for them to waste union money. They usually use it to line their own pockets, line the pockets of their favorite politicians, and bribe politicians to enact legislation that will benefit the union bosses – not the workers that are members of the union, but the union bosses.

The only people who benefit from unions are those running the unions, and this is yet another example. Members of New York’s Port Authority certainly didn’t benefit from the dues they paid to Hughes.

The charming and likeable Hughes, who is over 400 pounds and disgusting in many other ways, spend approximately $400 to $500 per session with prostitutes at a seedy Queens hotel. A law enforcement offfical said that “it’s unclear who he was meeting with, men or women.” A male escort service was one of the many prostitution agencies that he contacted.

Aside from the prostitution, Hughes also used union dues to pay for outings at the Mohegan Sun casino in nearby Connecticut. There he ran up huge tabs with his gambling, drinking, and fine dining. In court, Hughes admitted that he “didn’t use it (the $294,000 in funds) for union benefit.” Instead, he “used it as salary.” What’s interesting is that Hughes seems to realize that it’s wrong to waste union dues on gambling and hookers, but he doesn’t see a problem with using it to amass his own power with a disregard for the needs of the union workers. But hey, baby steps, right?

Monday morning a man confessed to murdering an Atlantic City casino manager out of revenge. Mark Magee admitted in court to murdering Ray Kot, a shift manager at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, last year. His reason for the killing: the casino was cheating him.

Mark Magee, who has a history of depression, said that “casinos, not just the Taj Mahal but all the casinos in Atlantic City, are cheats.” Magee stated that he believes that “the tables are electronically controlled” to cheat the players out of money. Even more outrageously, in court while Kot’s widow sobbed, Magee called for an investigation into the practice of the casinos to prove his point.

Throughout years of playing at the Taj Mahal, Magee became convinced that the casino games, especially roulette, are electronically rigged to make the players lose. After all, what else could explain his lack of success? Well, I can think of one: Roulette has a high house edge. In fact, every casino game has a house edge. If they didn’t make money in the long run they could not stay in business. Every player understands they they’re playing against the odds, or at least I assumed every player did. Magee seemed to think that the casinos were supposed to provide a means for players to make easy money and when they didn’t, he sought vengeance.

Last year, Magee came to the casino armed with a .38-caliber revolver. He waited in the casino for hours before Kot walked away from the crowded casino floor. Once he was isolated, Magee moved in and shot Kot, fatally wounding him. This is the first murder committed at an Atlantic City casino.

Even if the casino was cheating their customers – which I have no reason to believe is true – and even if Kot was in on the scam – which I have no reason to believe is true – Magee’s actions would still be unjustified. If he thought he was being scammed, he could have gone to the police, since the casinos are tightly regulated by the government to ensure that they are fair. Instead, he took a man’s life.

Magee’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for August 12. He faces at least 30 years in prison.

I’ve always said that if you want to have really bad gambling odds, you should play the lottery. Well, some genius in Ohio tried to use lottery tickets to fund her gambling habit. In her defense, she was stealing the lottery tickets, so she wasn’t really losing money there.

Deborah Strong used to work at a Kroger store and part of her job duties involved refilling the lottery scratch-off ticket machine when it was empty. Somewhere along the line, she got to thinking, Hey, I bet no one would notice if I just stuck some of these tickets in my pockets. I can steal thousands of them over time and scratch them off and win big money! I can then blow that big money by spending it at a casino! And the best part is that no one could ever find out! It’s perfect! I really am a genius!

I have not analyzed Ms. Strong and cannot testify to her level of intelligence but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I believe she was wrong if she actually thought that “genius” part. Depending on who you ask, Strong stole either $189,000 or $530,000 worth of scratch-off tickets. Yeah, I know that’s a big difference. Kroger officials estimate that they lost out on $530,000 of revenue from Strong pocketing the tickets, but in court Strong admitted to a theft of $189,000, though she didn’t seem clear on that amount, either.

When asked about the money, she said that it didn’t seem like that much and was quick to point out that “a lot of them are losers,” so it’s not like she “got that much money.” So her defense against prison time only makes her plan look way dumber. Yeah, a lot of the tickets she stole are completely worthless, and yet she’s going to prison just the same.

Yesterday, the judge sentenced Strong to five years in prison.

Of the many flaws of Strong’s plan, this one sticks out: If none of the tickets are big winners, then she risked going to jail for nothing and didn’t make enough money for it to be worth the risk. However, if she were to scratch off any big winners, when they are redeemed the Lottery Commission requires that the winner submit her Social Security number. That’s how she was caught.

Once Kroger determined that they had a problem with lottery ticket theft, they began to go through the names of lottery winners who redeemed big cash prizes. They then found Strong’s name next to tickets worth $5,000 and $10,000. After that, it didn’t take much time to build a case against Strong.

After all, this isn’t her first time stealing from an employer. In 2001 she stole $14,150 from Cash City and while working as a teller for Provident Bank, she stole $20,000. In both cases, she stole the money to fund a gambling habit. As a result of her prior convictions, she was placed on probation for four years and was ordered to repay the employers, stay away from the Indiana riverboat casinos and attend weekly Gamblers’ Anonymous meetings.

Now she has a lot more money to pay back. In addition, though I don’t think she’ll be able to attend her meetings, Ms. Strong has plenty of time to think about gambling responsibly or not at all. A lot of people will look at her prison sentence and ask “was it worth it?” For me, there’s something else, though. If Strong stole $530,000 worth of tickets, that’s a lot of tickets to scratch. As the judge joked, she must have carpal tunnel by now.

When I first read this report, I had to double-check to make sure my source wasn’t The Onion, The Daily Show, MSNBC or some other source of fake news. It wasn’t. It seems as though this report I’m about to give you is actually true.

A Pennsylvania man forfeited $2,000 in casino winnings and was arrested for violating his self-imposed ban. The 55-year-old man, who has not been named, placed himself on Pennsylvania’s self-exclusion program in April 2009. Many people place themselves on a self-exclusion list if they have a gambling addiction or some other problem of irresponsibility and they want to make sure they are unable to go to a casino and lose money.

If you are on the self-exclusion list, no casino is allowed to admit you and let you play. Somehow, a Pennsylvania casino – the Presque Isle Downs & Casino in Erie, PA – did let him enter and play. Not only that, but he won a $2,000 jackpot. Once it was learned that he was on the self-exclusion list, his winnings were forfeited and he was arrested for trespassing.

And there’s where I think this goes into the realm of insanity. Players like this man have a problem controlling their urge so to take away the temptation of gambling at a casino, they voluntarily place themselves on an exclusion list. It is the choice of the individual to place themselves on the list as a way of helping them fight the temptation to play at a casino. The casinos then oblige by helping them with that. Why are criminal charges involved?

I get the forfeiting of the money. That makes sense because if he gets to keep it he is being rewarded for giving in to temptation and playing at a casino. Since the man wants to avoid that, you don’t want to reward that behavior. I don’t think a punishment in the form of criminal charges is warranted, though. Did he know when he agreed to the self-exclusion that he could be charged with trespassing if he violated the self-imposed ban?

It seems to me that if people with gambling problems learn that putting themselves on a self-exclusion list could bring criminal charges against them, they won’t do it. Let’s face it, if they didn’t have a problem with willpower, they wouldn’t be trying to exclude themselves. If relapsing can result in a criminal conviction, though, it seems like many will say “no thanks” and will not get help with their gambling problem.

Charging this man with trespassing is wrong and the charges need to be dropped immediately. Anything else is absurd and just morally wrong.