In addition, a court in St Albans in southern England recently decided that the gambling-sick woman must now also sell her house in order to at least partially repair the damage. Nevertheless, the consequences of their criminal activities are devastating. Much of the money is gone to this day. In addition, several employees of the company in question have lost their jobs and the company narrowly escaped insolvency. But how did the 63-year-old woman manage to siphon off such a large amount for herself and thus play unnoticed in land-based and online casinos?
2.24 million euros disappeared to this day
Joyce Baker worked for The Lightning Corporation as a financial clerk for many years. The medium-sized company is active in the field of lighting technology and has actually been very successful in the past. The problem started in 2012 when Baker was making unauthorized transactions, easing her employer by more than £ 2 million by 2018. This corresponds to an amount of around 2.24 million euros. Baker used a large part of the money to finance her gambling addiction. To do this, she not only went to online casinos, but also went to stationary casinos. The fraud began around six weeks after Baker started working for the company. It is questionable why it took several years for the brazen fraud to be exposed and for Baker to finally be arrested.
Perpetrator is supposed to sell her own house
In the first trial, the British girl who was ill with gambling was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison in September 2019. Now she is being told that she will be released on parole as early as 2022. Then, after a new court ruling, she has six months to sell her house in the county of Herfortshire. Your former employer is to be compensated with the proceeds from the house sale, although it is already foreseeable that the amount will not be enough by far. An appraiser puts the property’s value at around £ 375,000. But around two million GBP would be necessary.
If Baker does not sell the house voluntarily, she faces another two years in prison. Her ex-employer suspects that the perpetrator would have put at least part of the money aside. However, the defendant did not want to comment on this allegation in court. It also took far too long, from the employer’s perspective, before the court sentenced Baker to sell her house and use the proceeds to make amends.
30 employees of the ex-employer lost their jobs
This case is particularly tragic because to date 30 employees of the lighting technology company have already lost their jobs due to the multi-million dollar fraud. For the company’s own David Caddick, the current verdict is therefore only partially satisfactory. He would have liked a quicker response from the courts. Then in his opinion at least the dismissal of some employees could have been prevented. Due to the millions of dollars that the ex-employee had diverted, the company probably only narrowly escaped ruin. Specifically, he expressed himself as follows:
The money from the home sale, if it had been sold earlier, could have been used to save the jobs we lost at the company after we all suffered not only from their crime but also from the pandemic ”
Does the gambling addict woman deserve pity?
The older Briton is of course rightly criticized from many quarters. After all, the gambling addicted woman not only put a medium-sized company in financial difficulties, but also caused 30 people to lose their jobs. Therefore, it would certainly be wrong to claim that the perpetrator deserves pity in any way. However, it is also clear that gambling addiction is a serious illness. Characteristic of this disease is the inability of the person affected to withstand the “gambling impulse”. And that even though the person affected is well aware of the sometimes serious consequences in their personal or professional environment. If Joyce Baker was actually addicted to gambling, the criminal acts should at least be viewed from a different perspective.
As part of the comprehensive investigation, Baker has admitted to the investigative authorities that he is addicted to gambling. She also said she had gambled away up to £ 4,000 on the internet on some nights. She was also a welcome and frequent guest in land-based casinos. In order to be able to play with these amounts at all with British online providers, she also falsified creditworthiness certificates and certified that she herself had a significantly higher income.
Conclusion
The example from Great Britain shows the devastating effects of gambling addiction. In this case, the 63-year-old British woman diverted several million euros from her business account and probably used most of it to satisfy her addiction. It is questionable why it took the damaged company around six years to find out about the fraud. There seems to be a considerable need for improvement in the control mechanisms. Nonetheless, acts like those of the British gambling addict remain punishable and are rightly punished severely. One can only hope that the ex-finance clerk has learned from her devastating mistakes and will seek medical treatment to treat her gambling addiction.
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