girls gone wild gambles
Casino Lost

Wynn Resorts waited 16 months to collect $2.5 million from Girls Gone Wild boss Joe Francis and loses the criminal case.

So let’s say you are playing blackjack card games, and since you are rated, the casino offers you a marker, which is casino lingo for credit. You accept, lose the cash, and pay back 10% of the money.

Then a negotiation begins with the casino for a better deal on the remainder of the sum. Normal procedure, since when a gambler bets ‘large’, in the millions, the casino will give a discount on the amount lost.

Eventually you agree to pay back the money but the way you give it to the casino, let’s say it’s all in pennies, or in bundles of cash, is rejected by the casino which prefers a different form of payment.

By now sixteen months went by. The casino charges you, the gambler, with criminal theft and with writing a bad check to initially cover the marker.

Is it theft when a casino rejects good ole American money, preferring instead a certified check? Can a business wait 16 months and declare you a thief, while you’ve tried to repay the sum and were rejected? According to gambling news, a Nevada judge said no.

The infamous creator of the “Girls Gone Wild” videos, Mr. Joe Francis, owed $2.5 million to Wynn Resorts after accepting a $3 million market a few years back. He lost the entire sum, which to him is peanuts.

Mr. Francis paid Wynn resorts $500,000 and asked for a discount on the remainder. After the casino wouldn’t budge, Mr. Francis allegedly offered the money in a ‘brown paper bag’, and still the casino refused to accept it because the money (in its view) could have been ‘dirty’.

The judge ruled that 16 months is way too long for a casino to wait before a casino goes to court and files a criminal complaint for theft, especially after refusing payment.

The judge also ruled that one cannot write a bad check when there is money in the checking account to cover the sum. The prosecutors lost their opportunity to prove Mr. Francis committed the crime.

The moral of the story is that the next time someone owes you money, and attempts to pay, its best to accept it, no matter what form of currency it’s paid in. As one Roman Emperor said long ago ‘money doesn’t smell.’