Crown Melbourne has emerged triumphant in its six-year legal battle with Bendigo and Adelaide Bank of Australia. In 2009, the bank filed suit, trying to reclaim more than million stolen by former bank employee Kate Jamieson and later lost at the casino.
According to the Age, the case was about to go to trial when the bank folded. Crown Melbourne will pay the bank’s legal costs, but no other financial settlement was reported. The bank has retained a “right of reinstatement,” but did not explain why it dropped the case.
Australian gaming regulations are explicit on the subject: “If money is stolen or embezzled and paid to a person as or on account of a wager or bet,” the regulations say, “the person from whom it was stolen or embezzled may recover it, or a sum not exceeding its amount, in a court of competent jurisdiction from the person to whom it was paid.”
The lawsuit stated that former bank employee Kate Jamieson “stole or embezzled an amount of at least $3,221,134 between July 2001 and May 2004” and spent in excess of $3 million at the casino, primarily at the poker tables. She was later sentenced to seven years in prison.
The bank asserted that Crown “willfully shut its eyes to the obvious fact that Jamieson had stolen all or most of the monies wagered or bet by her at the casino” and “recklessly failed to make such inquiries as an honest and reasonable person would make as to the source of the funds.”
During her gambling spree, the casino treated Jamieson like a VIP, giving her free food and drink, free hotel stays, a free limousine, and complementary tickets to sporting events.
Jamieson explained her behavior during her court hearing, saying, “I was totally seduced by this, because this was a side of life I had never seen before.”
Last year, a court in Melbourne heard a similar case about a man who defrauded a fire survivor of almost $400,000, and then gambled most of it away at the Crown casino.
