On Topic: The man who embezzled $1.6 million

From Dubuque to Council Bluffs, there are 18 casinos in Iowa.

We also should consider these numbers:

•  The National Council on Problem Gambling reports some 60 percent of adults in America say they gamble on occasion during the year.

•  Of those, 1 percent are pathological - that is, addicted - gamblers.

•  Another 2 percent to 3 percent are considered “problem” gamblers.

Oh, I see those hands going up in the back of the classroom already: You're asking why we should care if some folk just want to have fun.

What are they hurting? It is, after all, their money.

Here's one possible answer: The National Council on Problem Gambling also calculates some $6.7 billion - that's billion, with a “b” as in “boy” - is spent annually on gambling addiction.

Another response comes from Michael J. Burke, author of “Never Enough: One Lawyer's True Story of How He Gambled His Career Away.” The “lawyer” he's referring to in the title is himself.

Burke embezzled some $1.6 million from clients' trust funds to support his own alcohol and gambling addictions. As he confessed in his book and in an interview this past summer with the Daily Finance: “I stole my children's college funds. I forged my wife's name on a mortgage agreement for $200,000.”

He went to jail.

Now Burke, who lives in Michigan, is telling anyone who'll listen about this particular addiction's dangers. (Royalties from his book, published in 2009 by the American Bar Association, go to repay his financial victims.)

And the reason we should care about Burke and his ilk? Because, “as with any addiction, the gambler needs more and more,” Burke told me when we chatted by phone a couple weeks ago.

Which means that you as a supervisor and business owner need to look to your ledgers and your store room.

“Protect yourself,” Burke cautioned. “Check your accounts.”

Gambling addicts, see, aren't so easy to spot, he warned. They're not like drug or alcohol addicts, who may show up at work clearly incapable of performing their duties.

He added that gambling addiction tends to be linked to other problems. Seventy-five percent of compulsive gamblers, Burke claimed, come from a substance abuse background - “They trade one addiction for another.”

“They get out of alcohol or drug treatment and start gambling,” he contended.

But there are - “sometimes” - other possible red flags for employers to watch for, Burke continued. A spouse may notice “large sums” of money go missing, or your financial officer may detect inscrutable expense reports.

So you're saying compulsive gamblers steal from where they work, I asked.

“All the time,” he sighed.

And those amounts indeed can be “large sums,” remember, because of the addict's growing need.

To add to that challenge for bosses, families and friends is that once you realize he or she is a compulsive gambler, most often “the damage is done. As long as the gambler has a token (remaining), he has hope,” Burke said.

The gambler's reasoning, if it accurately can be called that, goes like this: He can be down and just about out, but he still could score that big win. And everything will be OK again.

The other part of all this to keep in mind - and this is important - is that compulsive gambling, as with other addictions, is a disease.

Burke recalled that, at the time of his active addictive behavior, he certainly didn't view himself as a thief.

“I wasn't stealing the money,” he told me. “I was borrowing it.”

Compulsive gambling, Burke said, speaking from experience, “has nothing to do with cars or self-esteem. I have a wonderful wife …. Nobody had a better life than I did.”

It's a condition that needs to be treated.

“The only thing you can do at that point,” Burke said, “is get them into an in-patient program.” Absolutely nothing else, he swore, will work.

Casinos are designed as destinations for entertainment and excitement. And so they are, for most of us.

It's the addict - our employee, spouse or friend - who might not be able to find the exit without help.