Swedish Gambling Site Pays Back Stolen Gambling Funds

December 30, 2009 | News Category: Online Casinos

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An online gambling company in Sweden has volunteered to pay back money that was wagered with stolen money, by a gambling addict, at their online gambling site. The money that was used to place the wagers, was stolen by the online gambler from the company at which she was employed.

The unnamed woman with gambling problems worked in the finance department of an Uppsala company. She managed to siphon off about 15 million kronor in order to finance her gambling habit.

The company, not being a particularly large company, with about 30 employees, was badly affected by the loss of the money. Not only did the company show a loss for the year, rather than an expected profit, they also had to go as far as laying off some of their employees.

After the embezzling employee was caught, and tried in a court of law, she was sentenced to three years in prison, and also ordered to pay compensation to the company to the order of 10 million kronor.

One of the online gambling sites at which she gambled away a large portion of the stolen money has offered to pay back all that was gambled at their site, which amounts to 4.9 million kronor, or $673,000. The company has asked, however, that the details of the deal remain secret.

Anders Wallin, the convicted woman’s attorney, is planning to ask the court to reduce the amount owed by his client as soon as it can be confirmed that the online gambling company have issued the expected repayment.

The gambling site at which the woman gambled stated in the rules that they posted that a loss limit was imposed on their players. Players at the online gambling site, according to the woman, should not be able to wager more than $3,600 in any 24-hour time period. This restriction was obviously not followed since the woman said that she managed to lose as much as one million kronor in one night of playing on the site.

The gaming company has offered to pay the sum only if confidentiality is assured. The prosecutor for the case, Kenneth Brattström, said "It’s obvious that the gaming company understood that something was wrong. If the woman’s account of how the company acted is accurate, she has definitely been used and therefore it’s appropriate for a repayment to take place."

The move for an online gambling site to pay back money that was wagered by a player with gambling addiction, is certainly an unusual one. Thomas Nilsson told the Upsala Nya Tidning newspaper "I’ve never heard of anything like it."