Shoumin Chai, 55, had a career many law students only dream of. She graduated with a masters of law from the University of Houston and began working for a New York City law firm with a job that would bring $250,000 a year in maritime law. She was preparing to take the New York bar when, in 1992, Chai’s colleagues took her to Atlantic City and introduced her to gambling. That proved her undoing.
Chai’s addiction to gambling led to 15 years of casino-related crimes and a rap sheet that is 50-pages long.
Her latest crime involved “helping” people use the ATM at the Sands Casino. She would open up two screens with their password so that she could withdraw money from their account. She will serve two to five years in state prison and five years of probation.
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The amount of bizarre non-statistics based thinking that “serious gamblers” use is truly astounding.
Many states implemented lotto/lotteries on the premise that the proceeds would go to pay for education. I’ve thought for some time that a portion of those “education” funds should go into mandatory statistics classes. Kids may come out of some public schools not really able to read, but they should all be able to explain why the numbers you pick have no bearing on your odds of winning, why there are no “hot” slot machines (assuming the machines aren’t programmed strangely) and why you’re essentially never going to win the big jackpot. Oh well.
I wrote on a gambling blog how the casino was rigging blackjack a few percent in their own favour (which upset me). It was long, complicated and detailed. Most of all, I’d verified it myself over thousands of hands at home (I was a gambler). Should’ve seen the shoutdowns I got immediately. Almost hysterical. Not one asking me to expand/explain. “Don’t come between a man and his addiction”, goes the old saw.
How do they rig it? Super short version: busted hands and blackjacks are swept of the table into the shoe first. This piles up the number of “big” cards into groups which precise shuffling does not remove. Alternate lumpings of large and small cards produce more busts.
An Addiction is an Addiction regardless of addiction. Some folks after ceasing drinking, guess what? Pick up gambling…. Coincidence, I think not. I understand her plight…
Elaine,
I was going to write the line about the big Wall Street firms, but you beat me to it! 😉
P.S. Chai looks like a “Dimon” in the rough.
And when she gets out of prison, she’ll probably be hired by Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan!
3 to 2 she’ll be out in less than three years.