Imagine if you will that you have just bought a second hand car and it is sitting in your driveway looking nice and shiny. A police car pulls up and the constable comes to your door to tell you that the car that bought in good faith, and even did all of the appropriate checks on, is in fact stolen and it has had it’s identity altered. Before you know it that car will be taken away and returned to it’s rightful owner and you will be very much out of pocket, studying the bus timetable, and basically you have to wear the loss chalking it up to experience. Quite reasonably you are not entitled to keep stolen goods even if you had no idea that they were dodgy.
However for some strange reason the law has never been prone to seek to recover monies stolen and dissipated at gambling venues around the world.
Why can't stolen money be recovered when it has been gambled away at casinos or bookies?
CROWN Casino has paid out millions to clients of a disgraced accountant who gambled away their savings in a seven-year binge.
Writs lodged in the Supreme Court allege Crown cashed cheques worth millions of dollars for former Geelong mayor Frank De Stefano, knowing the funds were stolen from his clients’ trust accounts.
De Stefano was jailed for 10 years in 2003 for stealing $8.6 million from 12 of his accounting firm’s clients. He spent the funds on a gambling spree, largely at Crown’s exclusive Mahogany Room.
Call me naive if you like but it has always struck me as ludicrous that stolen or embezzled money pumped into the gambling dens of the country should be immune from recovery by the law. Perhaps if they were then said establishments would have to be just a bit more discerning about where the money is coming from when they open their door to every crook and swindler out there.
Just a thought Comrades
