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.

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?