Gamblers

There was a time in my life when I considered drug or alcohol addiction to be the worst character defect a person could have, in terms of the damage done to themselves and everyone around them. That was before I had ever encountered a gambler. In a way it seems surprising to me that considering the degenerate life I had led I was about 25 before I crossed paths with a gambler, but upon further reflection I guess it makes sense. While both activities would certainly appear to attract a similar type of person, personal priorities may keep some from one activity or the other. If getting high is your thing, you probably will rarely accumulate the cash for a night at a casino. When you wind up with money you get high, and only essentials will even begin to compete with that. However, if gambling is your thing, you could very well find yourself leaving the casino with more than enough cash for a lost weekend. I can't even imagine what life would be like with both problems.

It wasn't one gambler I met, it was actually two at the same time, a winner and a loser. They were both sales managers at a dealership I worked for. I'll start with the story of the winner, because it's shorter and less interesting (how often that is true in life!)

Dean was a Greek guy in his early fifties and without a doubt the absolute sleaziest person I ever had the pleasure of working with during my ten year tenure in the car business. Everyone that I know of that worked with him would say the same. He was an old school car guy, one of the generation who had earned the car business its dubious reputation, beyond dishonest, really, criminal. And he was so good! That's what made the guy scary to work with. As a salesman you have no control over the financial make up of the deal, the sales manager does that, so you can't sell anything without dealing with one of them. Sometimes there was only one guy available, so there was no decision to be made. Sometimes you could choose. Choose Dean, and you might well end up watching him fleece the customers you have spent the last two hours bonding with, and might actually like. But oh my the commissions some of his deals generated! He once went in to talk to the customers a salesman had been working with, and in the course of his schmoozing told them he was the guy's uncle. The salesman was Japanese, his name was Takashi. That lie may seem minor, and it was sure as hell funny, but it is really indicative of his pathology. That lie didn't get him any extra money, it didn't help him form rapport, it served no practical purpose at all. He did it because he enjoyed seeing what he could get away with.

He also enjoyed gambling, and he was good at that too, thought as a slot player skill doesn't really come into play. He had once won a major jackpot at some casino, and had a picture up in his office that showed him shaking a guys hand and getting an oversized check. I don't remember the exact amount, but it was enormous, $200,000 or somewhere in that vicinity. I never went to a casino with him because he went on his days off, which I worked, but from the accounts of my coworkers I understand he had a peculiar method. He played $25 dollar slots, something I didn't realize even existed, and here is how he played. He chose a machine, would feed in a grand or two, then rest his forearm on the machine and lay his head on his arm so he couldn't see what he was doing. He would then hit the spin button until he heard the lights that signaled a win. Strange. He might lose ten grand on a Wednesday afternoon, but overall, he came out on top. I would find it hard to believe but I heard that from numerous people who had known the guy for twenty or thirty years. Some people are just lucky that way.

And some aren't, which brings me to the other type of gambler, the loser. Sean was a used car sales manager, and my immediate boss when I moved to that department though he was only a year or two older than I. The first time I went to a casino with Sean he impressed me. He was a blackjack player, which was the only game I was even remotely interested in. When we got to the casino he sat down at a $50 table, which was too much for me. I settled in at a $25 dollar table and played for about an hour. I had brought about $300 with me, had gone up to nearly $600, and then back to where I started. That was enough for me, and I went to find Sean, hoping he was ready to go. When I found him he was at a $50 table with a substantial pile of chips in front of him. I knew he had brought $1500 in, and while I couldn't see exactly what he had now, it was over $4000 at least. So I took a free seat at the table, ordered a drink, and watched him play. He knew what he was doing. He played a tight, controlled game, not betting wildly, splitting, doubling, hitting, standing all based on math rather than impulse. He didn't win every hand, but he was winning consistently, and seemed very much in control. Until a few hands in a row went the other way, including a couple he had doubled or split. Even though he was still way up on the night, the rapid loss of a large amount of chips flustered him. The tight, controlled game gave way to large, impulsive betting as he attempted to regain lost ground. This, predictably, only accelerated the pace at which he was losing money and faster than seemed possible he was broke. He turned to me and asked to borrow a couple hundred bucks.

Let me stop right there and explain a few things. While I often borrowed money, I never lent it. Life had taught me that anyone looking to borrow money from me would never be able to repay it. I also knew addictive behavior pretty well, not that you had to be a psychologist to understand what was going on with him. And he was really only slightly my boss, which sounds weird, but he was almost a junior manager of sorts, and I at that time was an absolute rock star in the used car department, the store for that matter. I could tell him to fuck off with impunity, which is exactly what I, politely, intended to do. I had been ready to go for quite awhile anyway.

I loaned it to him. I don't know how he talked me into it. The guy was incredible at borrowing money, and I would see this skill employed in the near future to a much greater extent. The ability to be told no and ask again, and again, and again is what separates great salesmen from the absolute worst. The average don't push it, and don't make waves with people. The truly terrible just repeat themselves and badger people into annoyance. The great ones find a way to ask the same question a dozen times, subtly rephrasing it to overturn the reason given for the previous denial, and the mood stays friendly the whole time.

Fortunately for me, he started winning again, and as he won he paid me back. He played up to nearly $3000 before we called it a night. What you remember about a situation is highly dependent on its outcome, and though I had watched him crumble and had witnessed textbook addictive behavior, what I took away from that night was this: He won a lot of money, he was a good gambler. Within three months I would be standing outside behind the used car department smoking a cigarette, and out of the corner of my eye see a guy that looked a lot like Sean jump over the back fence of the dealership and disappear into the neighborhood beyond.

The story of the events that led to this includes a story that might be more interesting than Sean's daylight dash, or even the reason for it. It started with me answering a call about a used BMW X3 we had.

The guy who called was Mexican, and his accent was so thick I had trouble understanding him. I wasn't sure he understood me for that matter. I did the salesman thing and tried to set a firm appointment and get a name and number out of him, but it was difficult and I gave up pretty quickly. He said he would stop by, and I said OK, hung up the phone, and totally forgot about it almost immediately. That night as Sean and I were locking up to go home a Chevy Avalanche pulled in and a short Mexican guy hopped out. He was wearing an old flannel and faded work pants, and there was nothing remarkable about him. He was probably in his forties, and looked like he had worked hard every day of his life for not very much return. I walked out to say hi, and mention we were closed, and he asked for me by name. Then I remembered the call, and noticed his truck was not more than a year old. Avalanches are not cheap, in fact they are pretty pricey, but I still didn't get a different vibe from him than my initial impression. It was late, we walked over to the BMW, he peeked in, and said he would be back. Once again, I forgot all about him. It wasn't that I dismissed him because he didn't fit the BMW mold. I had sold expensive to cars to very broke people before. It was late, and I wanted to go home.

The next evening he came back, and this time with his wife. She looked even less the BMW type, and spoke no English at all. They drove the car, they liked it, and they wanted to talk numbers. They would be trading the Avalanche. That really wasn't good news to me. On the one hand, he had a current model year $30 something thousand dollar truck, so he must have a little money and credit, but on the other hand, the first year of depreciation on a car was a killer, and he almost certainly owed way more than it was worth. Trying to finance a used car plus negative equity from a trade in required really good credit, or a lot of money down. When I began the appraisal on his truck and saw the odometer I was even more dismayed. Over 29,000 miles on a current model year truck, about 18,000 more than average. I went through the motions, called and got his payoff while I was waiting for our GM to assign a value to the truck. He owed a lot. Sean drew up some numbers for me to present to him based on $8000 down, and we were giving him a pretty good deal upfront. His situation didn't seem to present an opportunity to try for more.

I presented the numbers to him, he talked to his wife and looked over the worksheet for 2 or 3 minutes and said ok. I was surprised, but I hid it, and asked him to start filling out a credit application. I had explained earlier that the payments we quoted were only estimates, his credit would determine final rate and we would need to run his bureau before I could give him more exact numbers. He started filling out the application. While he was doing this I strolled into the large office Sean and the GM shared. They asked what was up, casually, and I told them he was filling out an app. Neither one of them saw this going to far either. Still, as Sean mentioned, if he wasn't scared off by the $8000 grand down....who knows. A couple minutes later I grabbed the app and we took a look at his credit.

His score was great, high 700's absolute A-tier by the strictest of standards, but his bureau didn't make a lot of sense. He worked at a factory and listed his income on his application at $34,000, or thereabout. His bureau showed that he had a mortgage, the loan on the Avalanche, and another truck, another expensive truck, only 2 years old, and a few smaller open accounts. He had put a fairly large chunk of cash down on both trucks, yet the payments on them and his mortgage were higher than his income. By a lot. Even weirder, the loans were all through a major lender, not a high risk secondary finance company. We couldn't figure out how he had accomplished this. True, his payment history was perfect, never a late payment on anything, but banks look at debt to income ratio regardless of your repayment history, and they never loan money for cars when your outstanding debts are higher than your income, for obvious reasons. The other question we pondered was where he came up with the cash he had put down on these trucks. It didn't look like he had room in the budget for gas. Hey, not our business. Banks were closed for the day, only thing we could do was ask him for a deposit and call it in tomorrow and see if someone would go for it. I explained this to him and he said he would be back in an hour with a deposit. I halfheartedly mentioned he could put in on a credit card, no, he wanted to bring cash. I said Ok, see you soon, and gave him his keys back.

Close to nine that night, and once again it was just me and Sean locking up when we saw the Avalanche pull in. He came in and said he brought the deposit. It occured to me at that point that I had never given him an amount for a deposit (I usually got as much as I could, but all the deposit was for was to give the customer the feeling that they were obligated, though legally we couldn't keep it). The three of us walked into the sales office, Sean sat down at his desk and I sat across from him and motioned for my new friend to sit next to me, but he was busy fishing something out of his pocket. $8000 grand, in a rubberbanded roll so tight it sounded like a pool ball hitting the desk when he flipped it down. Sean and I looked at each other, and Sean looks at him and asks how much that is. $8000, the deposit, he replied. Bless his heart he brought the whole down payment. In cash. I still didn't think we would be able to get him approved. Before we could even move to start counting the money he said, OK I call you guys tomorrow and was gone. Didn't ask for a receipt, didn't wait for a thank you (which was certainly forthcoming, I was liking this guy more every time I saw him), just left. Which is what I wanted to do. I sat with Sean and we counted the money and I happily abandoned him to receipt the cash and do the paperwork.

Around noon the next day Sean tells me he heard back, and got a conditional approval, but the bank wanted $13,000 down minimum. I called him to tell him what I thought was the bad news, but all he said was OK, I bring it tonight. Now I was in a gray area. Federal cash reporting laws start at amounts of $10,000 or more, and you're not supposed to warn people of this. I had watched a 12 minute video and signed a form to this effect. However, I had no intention of letting this poor guy walk into something, so as casually as I could, I mentioned that maybe he would rather bring a check for the additional money. I assured him a personal check from him was fine. He wanted to bring cash. So, screw casual, I told him as bluntly as possible about cash reporting. He said OK, and that night he came by and dropped another $5000 grand on Sean's desk.

We got the deal approved, and a day or two later he picked up his BMW and left us his Avalanche. Our GM was a truck guy, and when he heard it had a full tank of gas he had his plates put on it and drove it home that night, and for the next few days. One morning he arrived at work and told me the check engine light had come on. No big deal, it was still under warranty, so I dropped it off at the Chevy dealer down the street.

The next day our GM gets a call from the Chevy dealer. The problem is with the fuel system, but they can't cover it under warranty. Apparently, someone had taken the gas tank off, and it looked like something had been welded in it, but was no longer there. This voided the warranty. The GM called me and Sean in and told us this and we all busted up laughing in amazement. It all made sense. The high miles for the year, the other truck with high miles, the insane amount of cash this guy had. I had considered that the guy was doing something, but I never really thought it was true. He just wasn't at all what I expected a trafficker to look or act like. I still can't reconcile the guy with the situation, but it makes me smile every time I think of him. Guaranteed, none of his gringo supervisors at the factory had ever considered the guy they were talking down to was Pablo Escobar.

Which brings me back to Sean. The night our friend dropped off the first $8000 I went home and left Sean to receipt the cash. Sean, however, went to the riverboat and lost it all. The following night he lost the next $5000 as well. He had now embezzled $13000 from a store owned by people you did not want to steal from. Things only got worse as he tried to win back his losses over the following weeks. He used his skill at borrowing money to borrow $5000 from one of my best friends who was now working in our department, and he wasn't naive or foolish either. Worse yet, he convinced him to do it via a credit card advance at the casino, so he was out $5000 he didn't have plus mounting interest. In desperation Sean started leaning on our vendors and wholesale buyers. A lot of people made money either buying cars that we took in trade but didn't want to resell and reselling them or doing minor body work on the cars we took in. He used this as leverage to extort loans, $1000 here, $2000 there. I had no idea this was going on, and we worked long hours together. I can only imagine how sick with worry and anxiety he must have been, but it never showed.

The day I saw him go over the fence I finished my cigarette and went back inside. In our parking lot I could see two unmarked police cars with sheriffs plates, and a minute later the owners wife and two sheriffs walking towards the used car department, and she looked furious. She was not a woman to be trifled with, and when she asked where Sean was I just said I didn't know. I didn't want any part of whatever was going on. Later that day the GM filled me in, and I was absolutely astonished, and at once I felt so bad for him. I liked him, our GM did too. We weren't best friends but we worked long hours together in a small department. He was like family. In the coming weeks more and more people came forward, and we finally got a bead on how many people he had borrowed large amounts from. My sympathy for him faded a bit with each case, and when my friend told me about the $5000 on his credit card it evaporated entirely.

In the end he turned himself in, and made arrangements to sign over his 401k to the owners, among other concessions, but I doubt that that even nearly covered the $13000 grand. Everyone else was just out, and so was he. He had been living with his parents and had his girlfriend and daughter there with him. I guess they stayed.

He had had problems with gambling before, so to his family it was a matter of economic survival that he not be allowed near their house. They had a bit of money, and he simply could go through too much too fast when he lost control. This was the first and only time in my life I have ever felt fortunate to have drug problems, because I learned then, there are far worse things.