Gambling Addict Up to His Neck in Casino Debts
November 19, 2009 by Igor
Filed under All Casino news, Gaming offline
If there is one thing that lures many gamblers into becoming high roller players is that it is the thought of winning huge amounts of money for so short a period. We all know that high rollers can become millionaires in a roll of a dice or a turn of the card, and this is the dream of many gamblers, but when that dream becomes an obsession and turns into an addiction, the dream then becomes a nightmare.
Harry Kakavas – High Stakes Problem Gambler
Harry Kakavas might have been very rich in his own right, having just recently sold his house for more than $18 millions, but with the kind of addiction that he has, it has been money down the drains.
When Kakavas went to Bahamas for his honeymoon, the Atlantis Paradise Island Casino lent him a line of credit worth a million US dollars, despite a background check showing Kakavas owes several casinos in Las Vegas huge sums of money. The fact that Kakavas has just recently sold his house for $18 million dollars has more than allayed the fears of the casino that Kakavas will not be able to pay up what he owed them. But in just a span of four hours of playing at the casino’s baccarat table, he exhausted the million dollars’ worth of credit and then some as he lost more than half a million dollars’ worth of his own money, $641,500 to be exact. This, he lost after saying that he was not going to gamble during his honeymoon.
The Legal Battle
Now, the casino is after Kakavas to pay them his dues plus an excess of $13,300 in US dollars for commissions, but the lawyers of Kakavas argued that it was the casino that took advantage of Kakavas’ gambling problem, especially since they already know that Kakavas is up to his neck in casino debts. During the period of June 2005 until August 2006 alone, Kakavas lost more than $30 US dollars when he went through a $1.5 gambling binge at the baccarat tables in the casinos.
The casino argued that the actions Kakavas showed during his stay in the Bahamas did not give an inkling that he was a gambling addict and that he has gambling problems. In fact, he was just like any other high stakes player, the casino states, so there was no reason for them to become alarmed. Furthermore, the background check revealed that the debts he owed were only under 90-days old, and this is the typical duration provided to high stakes players to settle up their debts. Furthermore, the background check also revealed that Kakavas was able to repay $4.5 millions to MGM Grand, so there really was no reason for them not to give him a line of credit.
This legal battle between Kakavas and the Bahamas casino is still ongoing, so let us wait and see for the outcome of the case.