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.