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Which U.S. state do you think has the highest gambling embezzlement rates in the nation? Is it:
- California
- Wisconsin
- Virginia
- Oklahoma
- Florida
We’ll have the answer in a moment but did you know that a recent study revealed that gambling addiction drives a significant amount of white collar crime?
Hardcore gambling addition is treated by keeping those addicted away from cash and credit cards for up to six months.
Easier said than done.
“That means taking a sack lunch to work,” Wiley Harwell, the executive director of the Oklahoma Association for Problem and Compulsive Gambling, said in an interview with Tulsa World. “Somebody else pays the car bill. Somebody else deposits your paycheck. You don’t have a checkbook or a credit card or anything. The temptation is just too much.”
If you guessed California above, you’d be correct. New York comes in second. But one of the other choices above comes in a close third.
That would be Oklahoma.
Harwell estimates that 3 percent of the population, or more than 116,000 Oklahomans, have a gambling addiction.
“With many more on their way to a problem,” he said.
Oklahoma has some recent shining examples of white collar crimes perpetrated by a former state Senator, that being Rick Brinkley.
He was president of the Better Business Bureau of Eastern Oklahoma and pleaded guilty this month to embezzling $1.8 million.
Then there’s Lorna Jean Vanlandingham, a retired police officer and trusted treasurer of the Tulsa Fraternal Order of Police for well over a decade and is now serving a prison sentence after being found guilty of embezzling $400,000 to support his gambling habit.
“It’s like an alcoholic going to work at a brewery”, Harwell told Tulsa World. “The urge to skim off the top becomes irresistible.”
