Casinos As Debt Collectors

by Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

First off, who knew that the gambling industry had its own news portal with columnists? For those of you out there who didn?t, take a moment to get to know WagerWeb.com — which is running a story today about casinos as debt collectors.

If you?re like me, your only real experience with casinos is watching Sharon Stone as Ginger McKenna Rothstein go nuts in her closet while wearing a wig and some fierce blue eye shadow. Turns out, though, that casinos regularly loan billions (yes: billions) each year. Of that? Nearly $550 million remained unpaid after the party was over.

That money?s got to be collected somehow. And, it turns out, the casinos and their lawyers are pretty deft at tracking down and collecting that debt. According to the piece at WagerWeb.com, ?Casinos eventually collected more than $91 million of these bum markers. So, of $2 billion lent by Atlantic City casinos, only 1.3% was not repaid. Still, that means $28 million had to be written off.?

The piece is well worth the time, looking at techniques (which, yay!, don’t include baseball bats to kneecaps) and how the gambling industry interacts and affects collection law.