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 According to a Prudential spokesman, Trolaro “misappropriated multiple clients’ funds withdrawn from their checking accounts, savings accounts, annuity contracts and/or brokerage accounts for his own benefit and borrowed money from several clients without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?

We have a nominee for 2010 Son of the Year: His name is Richard Stone and he is charged with 22 counts of theft and 21 counts of criminal treatments. The victim of all 43 alleged crimes? His mother.

Stone, a resident of Portland, Oregon, took control of his mother’s finances in 2006 after she was diagnosed with dementia and moved to an assisted living home. Nothing is unusual about that. Anyone diagnosed with dementia usually either gives up control of their finances completely or has to have a designated family member co-sign any financial transaction. What is abnormal, or at least I hope, it what happened next.

According to the district attorney, Stone decided to use his mother’s finances for something much more fun and interesting than paying her medical bills. He took them to casinos and gambled with it instead. With no one there to pay for her thousands of dollars in medical bills, the state of Oregon picked up the tab. That means if you are reading this and live in Oregon, you paid for the medical bills of this man’s mother so he could have some fun at a casino.

Yup, that’s right, and it gets worse. According to the DA, Stone sold his mother’s home and received a check for more than $120,000. Somehow, though, it slipped his mind to report that sale. You see, if the state knew about it, they would have said something along the line of “Hey, it looks like you can afford to pay her bills instead of the taxpayers.” But he didn’t report the sale because that meant more gambling money. Woo hoo!

Stone pleaded not guilty yesterday to the charges and will appear in court next week. Of course we here at Gambling Review view the scumbag as innocent until proven guilty. That’s why I used words like “allegedly,” because I would hate to slander the cretin.

There are a number of points to make here, such as not gambling with someone else’s money, not gambling with money you can’t afford to lose, not committing crimes and whatnot, but I think all of that goes without saying. Instead, I will just say this:

If I remember to (which is a big if), I will give out both a Man of the Year (or Woman) and a Son of the Year (or Daughter) at the end of 2010. You can bet that Richard Stone is currently in consideration for both awards.