By Perry Duffin
Thousands of people are perpetuating violent assaults and life-ruining scams each year to feed gambling addictions, with research for the first time proving just how many crimes would be prevented if government clamped down – even slightly – on the pokies.
The “disturbing” study, by NSW’s renowned crime researcher, confirms the warnings of a man in prison for a multimillion-dollar fraud: gambling, like illegal drugs, pushes addicts into a life of crime.
Gavin Fineff said gambling companies were like dealers “handing out free heroin”. A study has found gambling spending is linked to violence, fraud and theft.Credit: Nick Moir
Doreen Beevor, 84, picked up the phone from her financial advisers in March 2020. Sentinel Wealth Management told her the $355,000 she had entrusted to them was gone.
“Disbelief, shock, anger, worry and fear for my future, shame that I had been so vulnerable, at the time of my husband’s passing not to realise the deception,” read Beevor’s letter to an appeals court this year.
She was one of 12 people financial adviser Gavin Fineff had defrauded of a total $3.35 million. Half of his victims were older than 70.
“The disease got me. I lost control and ended up losing it all,” Fineff wrote in a note to his boss.
Professor Don Weatherburn.Credit: Quentin Jones
Police soon found “the disease” in Fineff’s gambling slips – he had deposited more than $8 million with Ladbrokes and Sportsbet.
Fineff was not a battler; he made $160,000 each year, but turned to fraud to fund the massive habit.
The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre this week published disturbing research in the journal Addiction that found, as gambling profits grew across NSW, crime rose with it.
The researchers concluded that every 10 per cent increase in gambling expenditure causes a:
- 7.4% increase in assaults
- 10.5% increase in break and enter into and stealing from homes
- 10.3% increase in break and enter into and stealing from businesses
- 11% increase in motor vehicle thefts
- 8.2% increase in stealing from a motor vehicle
- 7.4% increase in fraud.
Cutting gambling expenditure by just 10 per cent across NSW would result in 4579 fewer assaults; 4247 fewer break and enters; 1398 fewer car thefts; 2361 fewer stealing from motor vehicle offences; and 3793 fewer frauds each year.
The paper’s lead author, the renowned former head of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, said the entire community “suffers from Australia’s love affair with gambling”.
“We’ve known for a long time that problem gamblers cause all sorts of problems to themselves and their families,” Weatherburn said.
“What we didn’t know is the big picture – like how much extra anti-social behaviour does an increase in gambling expenditure cause across a whole community and this study provides that answer.”
Finding the “substantial” link between gambling and crime is an immense breakthrough, Weatherburn said.
“One of the more enduring concerns is that gamblers may resort to crime to raise money. The available evidence supports this,” Weatherburn wrote in the report.
Australians gamble $24 billion each year, or $1200 for every person, one of the highest rates in the world.
Poker machines were behind almost 90 per cent of gambling expenditure.
But the courts are seeing high-profile cases where massive frauds are being used to pour millions through online betting companies as well.
Fineff, for example, told the Herald that betting companies offered him incentives as he gambled $8 million online.
Poker machines were behind almost 90 per cent of gambling expenditure the report found.Credit: Virginia Star
“It’s like a drug dealer handing out free heroin to people,” he said in 2020 before receiving a nine-year prison sentence.
The researchers, just like Fineff, concluded that gambling addiction and drug addiction were similar.
“[Gamblers, like drug addicted] people often find themselves in a situation where funding from legitimate sources is inadequate to meet demand,” the report’s authors wrote.
“The result is an increase in the risk and depth of involvement in crime.”
The researchers also found gambling provided an opportunity to launder illegal money and called it “the first unambiguous evidence of a causal link” between gambling spend and violent crime.
Court records from the last few months are littered with examples of poker machine addicts turning to crime to fund their gambling.
“He had accrued a gambling debt and had been assaulted in Malaysia because of the debt and coerced into coming to Australia to work in this syndicate,” a judge wrote of a major drug dealer earlier this year.
“He was burdened by drug use for which he had incurred debt and to which he added when he borrowed further money to accommodate his gambling propensity,” another judge said of a second drug dealer who was perpetually $70,000 in debt.
A different judge wrote of COVID-19 grant fraudsters last month: “The motive in each case can be described succinctly as greed in order to fund gambling and drug use.”
The researchers urged stronger controls on gambling.
“Reducing the supply of gambling opportunities, along with smoking and drinking bans, appear to be the most effective strategies for both the general population and for risky and problematic gamblers,” they wrote.
“Unfortunately, at present, Australia lacks any comprehensive strategy for dealing with gambling-related harm.”
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