Posted on 03/10/2008 4:59:27 AM PDT by buffyt
Arelia Margarita Taveras is a gambling addict, she spent her whole money in casinos and now is owning them like a million dollars! Why? She blames it on the casinos. And not only that, she is suing for $20 million.
I’ve seen this happen to some relatives of mine, they get caught up in gambling and end up losing a lot of money. Ms. Taveras had a good job, she made $500,00 dollars working as a lawyer, an her life was destroyed because of this addiction. She was one lawyer who represented victims’ families in the WTC attacks, and also appeared as a TV commentator also called one of the “21 New Yorkers to Watch in the 21st Century” by the Daily News in 2000.
It all began with a simple trip to Atlantic City. The trip was meant for relaxation, but t turned into a nightmare.
“They knew I was going for days without eating or sleeping. I would pass out at the tables. They had a duty of care to me. Nobody in their right mind would gamble for four or five straight days without sleeping,”
Taveras was given many “rights”, like permission to bring her dog to the blackjack table, clearly the casino was encouraging her to spend and spend more. I know of many casinos that do this, and this should be an illegal practice. However some lawyers think Taveras case is hard to prove:
“How are you supposed to know whether this was a woman who was just having a good time, or had money and was just lonely, as opposed to someone who couldn’t control themselves?”
Since that trip Taveras life has gone downwards, she used $100,000 of clients escrow money to cover her losses, charged with forgery and grand larceny at the DA’s office , lost her apartment and parent’s home and now is working at a call center. She says “It’s like crack, only gambling is worse than crack because it’s mental. It creeps up on you, the impulse. It’s a sickness.”
So, what do you think? I think is bad for the casinos to do this, but it is also the responsibility of each person to get some control of what they are doing. No one forced Ms. Taveras to go and bet enormous amounts right?
I hope the woman loses and her life is even MORE ruined than she has already made it.
Not guilty!
Too bad she can’t bottle stupid and sell it for a dollar. She would be back in black in no time.
Wow, who wrote this drivel? I can’t make my way through it enough to feel sorry for her.
Nice.
More “I’m not responsible for my own actions” crap !!!!!
Victim/entitlement mentality.
She has a good chance of winning this one - look at her name!
She’s an “oppressed minority”.
No such thing as responsibility for one’s personal actions.
I hope the casino wins.
Her purse don’t match her outfit.
Tell me she didn’t touch the nest egg...
Who wrote this horrible tripe?
A comma splice in the lead sentence?
A pointless question in the lead?
“...and now is ‘owning’ them like a million dollars” What the hell does that mean?
People, government-run education, and even four years of college is not enough. We must educate ourselves in the basics of written communication. This includes: the parts of speech, punctuation, vocabulary, usage, sentence structure and paragraph structure (which requires the basics of formal logic).
Personal responsibility! I am repeating it quite often to my 8 yr old & she is learning it. Nobody forced her & she shouldn’t get a dime. I worked in a casino & I never saw a dog allowed in the place I worked for. That was years ago so maybe now they let you do things like that. Seems to me anyone who has to steal to gamble or do drugs has a problem & ought to know it & get help for it. Some jail time would put an end to her gambling days & maybe when she got out she would realize stealing to gamble isn’t worth it. I wonder how she got her parent’s house & why then nobody tried to stop her or say enough...
Just look at the first sentence of this article:
Arelia Margarita Taveras is a gambling addict, she spent her whole money in casinos and now is owning them like a million dollars!
Who's going to take grammatical responsibility for that!
Based on the photo, what type of call center is she working at?
“I don’t gamble for one reason...i always lose.”Same here,well i must admit to ocassionally participating in the football pool at work.Anyways-it’s obvious this woman has a problem.Gambling away ones savings is bad(stupid) enough,but stealing from(trusting)clients is low down.Step one:she needs to admit she has a problem w gambling.Step two:Get into GA.Step three:go to court and accept her punishment for embezeling.Step four:make ammends to her ex-clients ie payback $$$.Anecdote:We have a co-worker who spends much of his time at the Seminole res-gambling and losing big.No one is holding a gun to his head.Talking sense to him is useless.His wife has left him,he’s in hock up to his eyeballs,but he keeps goig back-expecting that “big” win.
as a lawyer here’s something you SHOULD understand-”caveat emptor”. You’re the one who parked your but at the tables-they did not force you.
Geesh....why do people tell the WORLD how STUPID they are???
"They knew I was going for days without eating or sleeping," Taveras said. "I would pass out at the tables. They had a duty of care to me. Nobody in their right mind would gamble for four or five straight days without sleeping." (My Note: Casinos do claim dealers are trained to keep an eye out for those who are losing control)
Experts say her case will be difficult to prove... "It's like crack, only gambling is worse than crack because it's mental," said Taveras, 37, a New Yorker who now lives in Minnesota. "It creeps up on you, the impulse. It's a sickness."
She lost her law practice, her apartment, her parents' home, and owes the IRS $58,000. She said she even considered swerving into oncoming traffic to kill herself.
In interviews with The Associated Press, Taveras admitted she dipped into her clients' escrow accounts to finance her gambling habit. She was disbarred last June, and faces criminal charges stemming from those actions, but is trying to work out restitution agreements in order to avoid a prison term.
Her lawsuit names Resorts Atlantic City, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, the Tropicana Casino Resort, the Showboat Casino Hotel, Bally's Atlantic City, as well as the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
The casinos deny any wrongdoing, maintaining in court papers that Taveras brought her problems on herself. Casino representatives either declined to comment for this report or did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Last month, a judge dismissed the Trump casinos, the Tropicana, Showboat and Bally's from the lawsuit on technical grounds, but allowed Taveras to refile the suit against them by April. The suit remains in effect against Resorts and MGM because its allegations against them were more specific.
Joe Corbo, president of the Casino Association of New Jersey, said casino workers undergo extensive training on spotting problem gamblers and referring them to help, including a self-exclusion list the state maintains. Gamblers can voluntarily bar themselves from casinos, either for a few years or for life. While they're on the list, casinos cannot solicit them.
Dan Heneghan, a spokesman for the state Casino Control Commission, said 663 people are on the list.
"This can be a delicate situation, and it comes down to an individual's personal responsibility," Corbo said. "We can only suggest that they receive assistance and provide information how they can obtain help, but it is up to them to commit to seek it."
Paul O'Gara, an attorney specializing in Atlantic City gambling issues, said it will be difficult for Taveras to prove that the casinos knew she had a problem but ignored it.
"How are you supposed to know whether this was a woman who was just having a good time, or had money and was just lonely, as opposed to someone who couldn't control themselves?" he said.
As a young lawyer, Taveras made a name for herself representing the families of victims of American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed in New York City's borough of Queens in November 2001, killing 265 people.
More: Source
Missouri : Ways & Means Repeals) the maximum loss limit of five hundred dollars per individual player per gambling excursion; SB 1052 - This act directs revenue derived from the loss limit repeal and the imposition of an education allowance to the newly created Educational Opportunities for Missouri's Children Fund. Upon appropriation, the first twenty-five million dollars in the fund will be allocated to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for the A+ Schools program, provided that such program is expanded to all Missouri high schools. The remaining moneys in the fund will be allocated equally among the Early Childhood Development, Education and Care Fund, and the First Steps program--Sen. Carl Vogel, FEB. 25, 2008, PASSED
This one’s a major user. The stupid freeloading hyphenates sue for any reason to suckoff the system.
I wonder what identity this nitwit got that law degree under? And what identity she was using to crap out at the gambling tables?
These types use several ID’s and SS no’s to collect multiple US govt benefits and tax refunds.....and to fraudulently vote in several precincts so that they can dupe politicians to pander to ‘em with more benefits.
No kidding! They're as bad as those who sue the bar owners and bartenders for serving people who were obviously drunk and later get in an accident!
Oh. Wait. That worked. Nevermind.
Let's try again. They're as bad as the people who go through the drive-up at McDonalds, order hot coffee, then .... oops. No. That worked, too.
They produce nothing and thrive only from their ability to glean income from someone else's talent, productivity or misery.
She should become a hooker, at least they provide a tangible service.
This woman is full of dog stuff. Sleeping at the gaming tables? My daughter and I were at Atlantic City not too long ago and didn’t do so well. Since we both go with a very, very limited budget, we lost early and had to wait two hours for our bus home. We dozed off in the bus waiting area and the security guard there told us we had to move. It is highly unlikely they allowed her to sleep at the table. Isn’t she a disbarred attorney?
Great! Now we're paying for her sorry actions.
Lawyer-chick must've studied up on which state has the best welfare benefits. Ugh.
Casinos are in bidness to make money. The odds favor the House. If you play long enough, no matter how good or lucky you are (and assuming you don’t cheat or scam), the House will eventually take ALL of your money.
Anybody who goes into a casino without knowing this is an idiot.
So, would she have sued had she won?
Seriously, greed drives gambling. She’s a greedy woman who kept betting in order to win and lost instead.
I should sue Franzia and Ernest and Julio Gallo for all the wine I became addicted to.
This is sick. She already can't control her own life and thinks someone else should pay. She also seems to think someone else should pay in her death.
Plus being a hooker is not too far removed from being a lawyer---hookers also produce nothing and make a living from law-breakers. ROTFL.
I look at gambling like other entertainment. I take so much to gamble and when it’s gone or I’m ready to go home, I’m out of there. Is my motivation greed?
” I take so much to gamble and when it’s gone or I’m ready to go home, I’m out of there. Is my motivation greed?”
Yeah.
There was no author mentioned but this story was on Fox news today. I went to a casino in Okla when I was home last time, a few years ago, only because my high school pal asked me to go. Wasted $20 bucks in no time on a stupid machine. I figured it out real fast. The machine is programmed to give you a few bucks back here and there to keep you going, but it will take the entire $20 bill in the end. I didn’t like it. I would do better to just find the manager of the casino and hand him my $20 when I arrive, he will get it anyway LOL
AMEN!
You are RIGHT!
Kinda like when SMOKERS sue tobacco companies. My dad announced when I was in 4th grade that smoking was bad for you. That was in 1960 I think. So I have known for at least THAT long that smoking is bad for you. So if you involve yourself in risky behavior, you should pay the consequences. But once we get Obamacare or Hillarycare we will be paying for the meds of people who do not take care of their health, along with welfare checks to people who do dumb things like lose it all in a casino.
I bet she loses.
LOL, I loved that movie.
I believe you’ve hit the nail on the head. Greed propels them. Usually a substantial win gets them started down that path of compulsive gambling, but their own greed gets the better of them. It’s chasing that easy money, or so they think. My husband and two sisters are compulsive gamblers, so I have a good idea what I’m talking about. I, for the life of me, can’t seem to figure out their thinking. It got so bad I gave my husband an ultimatum, gambling or your family, cuz I’m not going to live like this anymore. Thank God he chose his family. My parents have their house in trust for their kids to insure that it’s not mortgaged to the hilt to get gambling money from it. Me? I’m screwed because of their addictions, it’s not fair, but that’s life. This woman is stupid beyond words. I hope she gets nothing and has to pay in one form or another. Hopefully, it will be a real humbling experience for her, it was for me and I don’t even gamble.
True, looks like there a a couple of places north of Vegas where she could start working off that debt!
They produce nothing and thrive only from their ability to glean income from someone else's talent, productivity or misery.
She should become a hooker, at least they provide a tangible service.
Well I don't hate them I just have no respect for them, they are sort of like the maggots of life!
I am usually up on movie lines, but can’t recall where that line was from.
“Lost in America” which was an Albert Brooks movie.
The brilliance of that movie is that it shows what really happens when average, white collar folks, drop out: the menial jobs, status/income disequilibrium, etc.
mindreader alert
it figures. she lives here in MN now.
I remember a story of an elderly couple where the husband (with his wife) gambled in this way and they were "thrown out". He had lost much of what they had saved.
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