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Eamonn McGirr is a twenty seven year old employee of Tyrone Tiling Services and he recently went to jail for stealing over £300,000. McGirr will go to jail for twenty months after stealing from his employer to fund his blackjack gambling habit. McGirr is accused of writing over 170 company checks to himself in a two year time span. He didn’t actually write the checks to himself but he made fake invoices and then took the money to fuel his online blackjack addiction.
McGirr started out wagering on football and horse racing and it was once he switched to blackjack that his gambling got out of control. The court was told of this happening and about how when McGirr earned his new job he was around a great deal of money and just couldn’t help himself.
Judge David McFarland presided over the case and he called the case ‘a moral tale of almost Biblical proportions’ and stated that online gambling companies needed to look at how they ran their business. He commented on how those with gambling problems have the potential to gamble away a great deal of money without the business knowing the player is an addict.
McGirr began stealing money from the company once his overdrafts on two bank accounts, a loan from a credit union and five credit cards that he owed quite a bit of money on. Prosecutors stated that the company did not know it was going on for some time as McGirr left no trace.
McFarland stated that McGirr had betrayed the trust that was given to him and he also defrauded the company he was working for as well as placing the jobs of his fellow employees at risk.
2010-09-17
