Woman steals $ 680,000 to spend on a gambling game that didn't even return real money
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A Tasmanian, Australian woman appeared in court on Monday and pleaded guilty to multiple counts of fraud after stealing thousands of dollars to fuel her addiction to an online gambling game.
Rachel Naomi Perri pleaded guilty to performing 475 “fraudulent transactions” between 2016 and 2019, while working as a finance manager at Tasmania Veterinary Hospital. She has been charged with “25 counts of computer fraud and one count of fraud” for stealing an approximate total of $ 680,000, report ABC Australia, which had access to the court documents.
Prosecutor Simone Wilson told the court that Perri transferred the money from the hospital bank account to a variety of accounts, credit cards and personal loans in her name.
It was not until 2019, after she was fired, that “anomalies in banking transactions were discovered.”
When questioned by the police, Perri immediately recognized his guilt and revealed that all the money had been spent on a gambling game known as ‘Heart of Vegas’.
“It is similar to playing slots and you pay to acquire coins or credits,” explained Wilson, but stressed that the credit purchased “never became real money“and that Perri” wasn’t able to explain why she was playing that game “if it didn’t even give her monetary gain.
“I got into so much trouble, but I decided I would keep going until they caught me,” Perri stated during questioning. “I knew I couldn’t get away with it. I was waiting for the police to knock on my door“She confessed. She also admitted that she felt” humiliated “by what she had done.
Perri already had a history of theft and gambling addiction. In the 1990s, she was convicted of stealing $ 4,986 in cash from her employer, and in 2015, she fraudulently removed a $ 21,300 credit card in her husband’s name without his knowledge.
The lawyer for the implicated, Greg Barns, assured the court that his client spent several “consecutive hours at the poker machines” and that in one session he had dedicated 16 hours to “continuously play on the machine”.
Perri is currently in custody and will be sentenced next month.
