Reading the first paragraph of this story in the online version of the Wall Stree Journal, I asked myself the question that I have posed here numerous times. That question is: How come some very wealthy people are extremely gullible and even stupid? In a blog post with similar title here, I was asking why wealthy people allowed themselves to be duped repeatedly and over several years by Bernard Madoff and other crooks.
So reading that Terrance Watanabe lost US$ 127 million over a year through gambling at casinos made me interested in what kind of man he is. From that title alone, one would assume that he is probably a spoilt man who inherited a great fortune from his parents and spends most of his time having fun and burning that cash. To my surprise, his life is so different from that ready stereotype. It is true that he lost that amount of money at gambling and especially by playing the games with the worst odds and sometimes while heavily inebriated. He also spent too much time at a specific casinos in Las Vegas and was even turned away from one because he was losing considerable sums regularly.
Terrance Watanabe is a fascinating person for me because while he received the bequest of a small corporation from his parents, he dedicated himself to work at it that the business had revenues of up to US$ 300 million when he sold it. Having put in that much time and foregone many other things, it is clear to me that he knows the value of money and was probably able to tell that the odds at casinos are tilted against the player and that regular and affluent players would be especially vulnerable to tempting offers from casino managers. In an earlier blog post it was confirmed that one of the casinos has resorted to hiring a professor of economics as a manager. So Terrance Watanabe is certainly not daft but I still find it difficult to understand why a person with such business ability decided to take such bad odds. To my mind, the same amount of money would probably buy a minority stake in the casinos in which he lost a portion of his fortune. His suit against the casino owners will definitely fail and he may face a jail time too. Not a good end for a man who built an impressive business and sold it profitably. Perhaps it is true that any person who takes on casinos probably does not value money.
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In essence, the guy was a plonker. He used others money to feed his addiction, yes the casino should have said no and told him where to stick it but there is another high profile case at the moment that is not related to online casinos and that is the Hilton Hotel chain who are in debt to the tune of $10 billion. Why then, does that awful woman known as the capital of France parade round as she does and who's money is she doing it with. If I was in debt I certainly would not be going around spashing the cash, these people tend to have so much debt they forget exactly what they have and don't have. Gets on my nuts.
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