Thieving Bookkeeper Costs Mecca Bingo £950,000

Mecca Bingo considered free spending Caroline Dumont a VIP, treating her to all expense-paid trips to the Bahamas and Las Vegas and a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. The 57 year-old bookkeeper earned £36,000 a year, nevertheless, she was highly at Mecca Bingo, spending £50,000 a month playing her favorite slot machines on their website. There was one problem with Dumont’s gambling, it was out of control. The grandmother from Swanscombe was feeding her habit by stealing from Tara Plant Hire and Steadfast Carpentry, companies where she worked as a trusted bookkeeper.

One of the companies that employed Dumont as a bookkeeper audited their books and discovered that Caroline was stealing from them. During the audit, Dumont was on a Caribbean holiday, paid for by Mecca. Her days of freely betting £250 a time, courtesy of nearly £1 million that she stole, were over. Admitting to her fraud, but claiming that Mecca should have stopped her, Caroline Dumont is spending her next three years in jail.

Kent County resident Caroline Dumont has said she turned to online gaming after a divorce in 2011. Trusted and well liked at the firms where she worked as a bookkeeper, it was easy for Dumont to defraud her employers. Caroline started taking small amounts of money, but as she grew more confident, she started stealing large amounts of money.

Mecca Bingo, as a gambling license holder in the UK, did not act in a socially responsible manner with Caroline Dumont according to the UK Gambling Commission. Red flags should have gone up at Mecca Bingo when one of their players suffered significant losses, but still kept betting large amounts. Caroline’s betting was out of control and it went unnoticed for years.

The Rank Group, the parent company of Mecca Bingo, voluntarily surrendered the £950,000 profit earned from Caroline Dumont’s wagers. Some of the £950,000 will go to programs for people who cannot control their gambling. It’s not certain if any of the money will go to the firms that suffered devastating losses due to Dumont’s theft. The forfeiture, possibly the largest in UK history, isn’t likely to hurt the Rank Group. The gambling company earned £20.2 million in 2014 and 2015’s profits are likely to surpass the company’s 2014’s earnings.

Mecca Bingo never questioned Dumont concerning her ability to place large bets and sustain significant losses, nor did Caroline ever take advantage of the free treatment, confidential emotional support or non-judgmental debt advice offered to people in the UK with a gambling problem.