A former employee of the Jacksonville Jaguars is currently serving a 6.5-year sentence in a federal prison for embezzling $22 million from the team to bet through FanDuel (he also bought a number of luxury items, including a golf club once owned by Tiger Woods- about $5 million in luxury items, in fact.) The Jaguars announced the other day that they are filing a lawsuit against the employee for $66 million in Florida, a state which allows plaintiffs to recover up to three times the lost amount in damages. The Jaguars are also "in talks" to recover their money from FanDuel.*
The employee claimed during his trial that he was "damaged" by his gambling addiction, which is a pretty obvious defense considering that the Supreme Court ruled several generations ago that addiction itself cannot be criminalized. I don't know if the defense worked in any way- it certainly didn't convince the jury to give him a pass on his actual criminal activity (the stealing of the money) but maybe it resulted in a lighter sentence. I'll leave that for someone else to research.
Here's the point: Every Major League Sport in the United States uses the availability of gambling apps like FanDuel, SportsKings etc. to sell their product, and every gambling service sells its product as "good, clean, innocent fun." But we've known of the existence of gambling addiction forever. We've known that gambling ruins lives, breaks up families, and lands people in crippling debt or even prison FOR EVER. Prominent novelists were writing about gambling as a destructive force two freaking centuries ago (I've always argued that the real villain of the Charles Dickens classic The Old Curiosity Shop was not the evil dwarf Daniel Quilp, but Little Nell's asinine grandfather and his obsession with making his fortune at the card table that ultimately kills her.) But today we have the biggest stars of Hollywood and (much worse) the biggest names in SPORTS selling what is basically Dignified Crack during every commercial break of every sporting event.
Embezzlers should be in jail. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for a guy who steals money to gamble and buy luxury items. But the Jaguars- and every other sports team that partners up with gambling- needs to understand their role in feeding this monster. They aren't innocent either.
*which presents an interesting problem. If the Jaguars can recover money stolen and then lost through FanDuel, why can't a spouse recover money stolen from a joint bank account for the same purpose? Where does FanDuel's responsibility for checking the source of the money being risked start and end? And while we're at it, how did a company which preaches "gamble responsibly" in tiny letters at the bottom of the screen accept MILLIONS in losing bets from the same person? Isn't this like a bartender whispering "drink responsibly" while filling the glass of the local drunk for the 2000th time?
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