How low can you go?

Desperate problem gambler, opportunistic con artist, or just plain waste of oxygen? Take your pick after reading this from local6.com:

A former caregiver will serve two years in federal prison for swindling a dying priest out of a $350,000 life insurance annuity, then gambling it away at casinos.

Brian M. LaGrand pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy Tuesday at a federal sentencing hearing.

LaGrand said his gambling addiction caused him to fritter away more than $10 million during his life, "but that's no excuse for what happened."

U.S. District Judge Anna Brown sentenced LaGrand to the maximum for theft, although prosecutors argued for more time based on aggravating factors. LaGrand was ordered to surrender in February.

Immediately after leaving the courtroom, LaGrand approached several of the Catholic priest's caregivers who cooperated with investigators.

"Hey Herman, how's it going? Are you still a Nazi?" he said to Herman Baurer, who helped care for Father Paul Zeller as colon cancer killed him.

"That's classic Brian LaGrand," said Portland police detective Amber Lewis, who investigated LaGrand and his partner, Marquis Leo Lagergren for the June 2001 crime.

U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut said the 86-year-old Zeller was often unconscious and unable to do basic things for himself when LaGrand volunteered to be his sole caregiver at night.

While LaGrand was supposed to be taking care of Zeller, he was rifling through personal papers.

According to a grand jury indictment, LaGrand and Lagergren faxed a letter on June 28, 2001 to Lincoln Benefit Life Insurance, supposedly from Zeller. That released the annuity funds to Lagergren's bank account in Palm Springs, Calif.

Between July 5 and Aug. 27, Lagergren and LaGrand gambled the money away at casinos in Las Vegas and Reno, Nev.

Zeller died July 13.

Lagergren pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against LaGrand. He was sentenced Sept. 11 to a year in prison.

LaGrand's attorney, Garry Bertoni, said his delusional client intended to use the money to win big, then repay the principal. Immergut disagreed.

"He's a manipulative person, and even months before he was caught, he did nothing to change his gambling behavior," she said of LaGrand.

In another case, LaGrand was charged with conning Cooper Industries of Ohio out of $731,000 worth of tire chain, Immergut said.

According to court papers, LaGrand persuaded the company that he was affiliated with LaGrand Industrial Supply, a company founded by his uncle.

Under a plea deal, LaGrand owes Cooper $200,000 in restitution. He and Lagergren owe Lincoln Benefit and Zeller's estate the money they stole.

This is, needless to say, a very bad guy. I don't know whether this story has any larger lesson for or against legal gaming, but it shows just how depraved people can be when it comes to money.
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posted by Dave at 7:28 PM

Blown away?

The corporate website for casino giant Kerzner International, which owns Atlantis, Paradise Island, says that core value #1 is "blow away the customer." I think most customers pay their debts on time and don't deserve to be gunned down, gangland style. This is a finalist for the bad choice of words award, 2003.
Resort Developer, Gaming Operator & Management Company - Kerzner International
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posted by Dave at 10:20 AM

Doggie justice, Vegas style

In most towns, animals are destroyed, put down, put to sleep, or even sent on a one-way trip "to the farm." Not in this city, where you quickly learn to be accountable for your actions. When dogs get out of control and are unwilling to listen to reason, they have a hit put on them. This morning's Review Journal actually has a headline reading "Two Accused of Hit on Dog." From the reviewjournal.com:

A prowler shot by police in a posh gated community earlier this month intended to kill a Rottweiler to avenge the dog's slaying of a miniature greyhound, authorities said Tuesday.
Police say Melvin Gilchrist, who survived the Dec. 5 shooting, possibly was paid $40 to kill the animal in the back yard of a home at Country Club Hills, a Summerlin subdivision where homes regularly sell for more than $600,000.
Investigators also have obtained an arrest warrant for Ryan Schiestel, Gilchrist's alleged accomplice in the incident.
'It's probably one of the strangest cases I've worked in 24 years,' Las Vegas police Sgt. Mike Thompson said.
Gilchrist, 26, and Schiestel, 25, are both charged with conspiracy to maim, poison or kill another person's animal, a misdemeanor. Gilchrist also faces two felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer in the incident near Town Center Drive and Summerlin Parkway.
FULL STORY

The owner of the mini Italian greyhound, which was "tore in two pieces" by the rottweiler, claims to have no idea who ordered the hit--she says she doesn't know either of the men, and has not been charged. Still, the story yields gems like this one:
"Two other police supervisors who spoke on condition of anonymity said Gilchrist was paid $40 to carry out the hit on the Rottweiler."
A story like this shows how pervasive the wiseguy mystique is out here. In other cities, disgruntled neighbors and deviants kill household pets all the time, but in Las Vegas, somebody puts a hit on a pet. But the strangest thing about this story is how the hit was planned to go down:

Meanwhile, police are still baffled by the poor planning of the strange scheme.

"I wouldn't want to try to kill a Rottweiler with a knife and a bat," Thompson said. "I'd be afraid of getting bit."

So the plan was to sneak into the backyard and kill the rott with a baseball bat and a knife? For some reason, I'm seeing the scene from the movie Untouchables where DeNiro (as Capone) beats the guy to death with the baseball bat, or the vengance scene from Godfather II where, as the young Vito Corleone, he knifes the mafia don who killed his father decades earlier. How did they expect to get away with this? Most dogs bark because a car drive by or a bird annoys them. I imagine that a dog getting beaten to death with a baseball bat would make a lot of noise.
As a lot of people said, this is a pretty hard city. We can now quantify this. Las Vegas is a city where a rottweiler's life is worth $40.
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posted by Dave at 9:41 AM

Gambler's fallacy

This story in the Sacramento Bee does a great job of explaining the "gambler's fallacy:"

"There is no way, without cheating, to take away the casino's edge," said Robert C. Hannum, a math professor at the University of Denver, who has worked as a consultant to slot machine manufacturers.

"I think many people understand that it's basically just entertainment with a chance to win something, and that's all. But some don't understand the basic math behind it," Hannum said.

California's current resident population of about 62,000 slots is likely to grow in 2004, either through renegotiated compacts between American Indian tribes with casinos, voter approval of an initiative that would give slots to some racetracks and cardrooms, or the influx of "Class II" machines at Indian casinos that are nearly identical to slots but don't need state approval.

And that means it wouldn't hurt the state's slot players to get familiar with Jacob Bernoulli.

Bernoulli was a 17th century Swiss mathematician who formulated the Theory of Large Numbers. Boiled down, the theory says that the more something occurs, the more likely it is to conform to the laws of probability.

For example, a coin has a 50-50 chance of being heads on every flip, no matter how often you flip it. If you flip it 50 times, it would not be statistically stunning if it came up heads 47 times. Flip it a million times, however, and it would likely come up heads about 500,000 times.

Sounds simple. But casinos win serious amounts of money every day from people who think a slot machine that hasn't paid off in awhile is due any minute.

"It's what is called 'the Gambler's Fallacy,' " said Jessica Utts, a statistics professor at the University of California, Davis. "People attribute a memory to a system that has no memory. They do it with the lottery as well ... but every pull is a brand new game. A corollary to the 'Gambler's Fallacy' is that things that happen in the long run should also happen in the short run. It just isn't so."

Then there's the "payback rate." The payback rate is the percentage returned to players of all the money bet.

In Reno, for example, the average payback rate for slots is about 95 percent, according to state Gaming Control Board data.

But a 95 percent average rate doesn't mean everyone who puts in $100 gets $95 back.

For one thing, a player who puts in $10 and wins $100 has a 900 percent payback on his money. That means a lot of other players on the same machine are going to have very small or no paybacks to get the machine to a 95 percent average.

On top of that, there's "the grind." That's gambling slang for slot players' penchant to put money they have already won back in the machine. That can raise the payback rate even as it lowers your bankroll.

Say you put $100 in a $1 slot machine and win $120. Your payback is 120 percent. Now you put the $120 back in, and win back $90 of it. The payback rate is now 95.4 percent ($210 total won out of $220 total bet). But you have only 90 percent of your original $100 left.

FULL STORY

This, in a nutshell, is why the vast majority of slot players are, in the long run, going to lose. No matter what your system, the plain fact is that the math is against you.
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posted by Dave at 10:33 AM

One more reason to play online?

Sure, online gamblers don't get to share in the excitement of a night out on the town. But they don't have to deal with second-hand smoke, either. Well, I guess they do if they live with a smoker, so maybe this isn't a great reason to play online. Still, this shows the anti-casino slant that persists in the media. From ABCnews:

A few hours in a casino may cost you more than your paycheck. According to a new study, the amount of secondhand cigarette smoke in a casino or any other smoke-filled room may present a substantial cancer risk to nonsmokers.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, found elevated levels of a cancer-causing agent, NNAL, in the urine of nonsmokers after they spent just four hours in a commercial casino. Researchers also found elevated levels of cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine, in the samples. Both NNAL and cotinine are specific to tobacco and were not found in the nonsmokers' urine before their casino visit.

"This evidence could be dynamite," says Robert West, an epidemiologist at University College London. "It is one thing to know that one is breathing in carcinogens; psychologically it is another to know that one's own body has been contaminated by them."

The study, published today in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, provides additional evidence to the long-held belief that secondhand smoke poses a health risk. The research is also expected to add fuel to the drive for anti-smoking regulations in public spaces.
FULL STORY

I feel much better about my time working in a casino now. If this is all accepted by the medical establishment, expect a new push for anti-smoking legislation.
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posted by Dave at 12:25 PM