Two employees of the discount retailer Poundstretcher, Christopher Cameron and Kieron Trott, simply wanted to see what it felt like to place a high stakes bet. When their manager left them in the shop with £3,380 in the till, they made a rash, spur-of-the-moment decision: they would head over to the local Grosvenor Casino Sunderland and wager the entire day’s profits on a single roll of the Roulette wheel.
Cameron’s defense attorney, Ian Cassidy, described the situation as “like something out of a comedy” and claimed that, prior to this incident, his client had never even set foot in a casino. “Mr. Cameron was working his regular shift,” said Cassidy. “It was just the two of them, and part of the routine is to check the cash that has been taken that day. They are joking saying ‘what would it be like if we took this money and gambled it’. Unbelievably, they persuaded themselves to do this.”
In what seemed like minutes, Cameron and Trott were on the casino floor, transferring £3,380 in cash into £3,380 in chips. The pair subsequently strode up to the roulette table, agreed to place all of the chips on red, and then watched as the spin came up black.
At 9pm, the manager of the Sunderland Poundstretcher received a call from Kieron Trott, explaining why and how the daily profits had been lost. When she laughed off the confession as a joke, Trott responded, “I’m not joking, call the police.”
Although he praised Cameron and Trott for returning to the store and ringing the manager, defense barrister Jason Smith called the crime “an act of gross stupidity.” The pair of high-stakes gamblers were sentenced with yearlong community service and told to pay £110 apiece in costs and surcharges. After finding new work with Nissan, Kieron Trott has started to repay his debt to Poundstretcher in monthly installments of £50.
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