O’Connor, a $50 million millionaire and former mayor of San Diego, California, was almost bankrupted by the machine. The machine, however, won out in the end. It was a seaside mansion where she lived when she was married to the co-founder of Jack in the Box. Now she lives with her twin sister, and they go to the movies together every week.
Her love for video poker (she called it “that machine”) was completely out of control. Over nine years at casinos in San Diego, Las Vegas, and Atlantic City, she bet more than $1 billion on the games. A “whale” is a person who spends a lot of money. Casinos would send a private plane to San Diego to pick up O’Connor because she was a big spender. She didn’t let us down at all. Before: A year ago, she told an interviewer, “I could lose more than a hundred thousand dollars every day.” This story will not be able to talk to O’Connor, and her lawyers said that she would not be interviewed.
According to her lawyers, O’Connor withdrew $2,088,000 from the charity foundation set up by her husband in 1966, which left it with no money and made it broke.
To find out what happened to “Mayor Mo” O’Connor, a world-class swimmer before becoming mayor of San Diego from 1986 to 1992. Her gambling addiction got worse when a brain tumour was found in 2011, and she blamed herself for it. When her lawyer looked at court records, he said that she mostly started gambling in 2001, when she was still dealing with the loss of her husband. It fits a condition called “grief gambling,” her lawyers say.
In exchange for a halt to the proceedings, she agreed to get help for her gambling addiction. In return, she decided to pay back the money she stole from the foundation and pay back the taxes she owed because of her financial misdeeds.
Many people don’t have that, and O’Connor isn’t one of them. Marilyn Lancelot lost two homes and a car in the fires, but she still had a lot of things. Police came and put her in handcuffs, and her life came to an end for good.
She started writing checks in her boss’s name and cashing them to pay for her gambling addiction as she was in debt. He says Lancelot, who was 83, was willing to do anything to get more money to bet on. In the end, her embezzlement conviction led to nearly a year in prison for the crime.
Gambling establishments have sprung up in recent years. Atlantic City and Las Vegas were the only places where you could gamble in casinos until the mid-1960s. There are now casinos in more than 30 states, which is a lot more than before. State lotteries, Powerball, and online gambling sites have been added to the list where you can try your luck and lose money. People who live in retirement communities assisted living facilities, and even churches sometimes get to go to local casinos as part of their fun.
According to experts, the fastest-growing group of American gamblers is the elderly. It could cost them their retirement savings if about 8% of people have a problem with it.
Psychologist Robert Hunter says that more than 40% of the people we treat at our Problem Gambling Center in Las Vegas are over 50 years old. Many of them became addicted to gambling after moving to where casinos are a common part of social life.
Gambling-industry marketers also know that ageing and the decline in cognition that often comes with it might make people less afraid of risk. The parts of the brain that make decisions as we get older may not work as well as they used to, which is called “executive functioning.” Gambling can be riskier if you’re older than the other people at the table, says a gambling expert.
According to 62-year-old Gordon Greco, a counsellor at the Problem Gambling Center in Las Vegas, most older people we meet doesn’t care about the money. They just want to have fun. Because they have regrets, loneliness, and unhappiness, they go to the casino to forget them. As soon as they start having money problems, they have even more problems and regrets.
Hunter says that older people prefer video gambling machines, now legal in more than 40 states. As a result, the risk to them has gone up a lot. They say that video slot and poker machines are the most appealing because they give the best sense of escape, even though gambling can be addictive.
