I don’t think there is anybody on this planet who would like to break Terrence Watanabe’s record of losing 204 million dollars in one single year. The American businessman was a regular visitor at the Harrah’s Entertainment casinos in Las Vegas and is still more than 14 million dollars behind with his payments, which means that he could even be facing 28 years in prison.
52 year old Terrence Watanba from Nebraska took over Oriental Trading Company, his father’s business in 1977, which is mostly dealing with party accessories and toys. The company’s yearly income exceeded 300 million dollars, when Terrence sold it to Brentwood Associates in 2000. Although the buying price has been undisclosed, it is highly probable that Watanabe received enough money to secure a wealthy life for all his descendants.
However, the 52 year old workaholic couldn’t bear having free time and first became the prisoner of alcohol, and then got addicted to gambling. As he regularly did these two free-time activities at the same time, he started losing huge sums of money, which means that the most his descendants can inherit will be his huge debts. According to the first reports by Harrah’s Entertainment, he had lost 127 million dollars in Rio and Caesars Palace, but it later turned out that they had underestimated his losses, which truly add up to around $204 million. Watanabe is still unable to put together $14.75 million, which means he could be facing up to a 28-year sentence.
Watanabe’s attorney attacks the casino’s attitude, saying that his patient had intentionally been given prescription drugs and alcohol to keep him playing.
"They took advantage of his inebriation to defraud him out of tens of millions of dollars," O’Donnell said. "There was a concerted effort from the highest levels of management to keep him gambling. They targeted him and then took advantage of his vulnerabilities. He is the victim here."
Terrence Watanabe
Watanabe had earlier received a promise from Harrah’s to be refunded 30% of his losses, which would be more than 60 million dollars, but he never received this amount. The businessman takes all responsibility, but would like to have back the 30% he had been promised.
According to William Thompson from Nevada University, refunding high volume players is a standard procedure, in which they get 25-30% of their losses back, depending on personal agreement. He also says that the greed shown by Harrah’s Entertainment describes the whole gambling industry, which is negative advertising for the whole of Las Vegas.
Watanabe used to play at the Wynn casino as well, but after the owner Steve Wynn came to the conclusion that he is an alcoholic and suffers from serious gambling addiction, he banned the businessman from his casino.
