As a biased industry observer, I admit that I generally try to put a positive spin on gambling news, while pushing for industry and legal changes that I think will help grow and improve the industry.

But sometimes I feel like a PR guy on Wall Street. It gets tough trying to defend your position when you have no control over some of the stupid decisions being made around you.

Early last year, I took William Hill to task for it's part in allowing an obviously sick individual to lose £2.1m, including a single wager worth £347,000.

I also chided UK regulated gaming companies when the news came out that they were not volunteering their financial support to charity.

In my opinion, when you operate a gambling enterprise, it is just plain bad business to NOT do everything in your power to be socially responsible.

Especially when you rely on the whims of politicians for your livelihood. The best way to get your industry legislated out of business is to act in a manner that creates recurring news stories about people losing their jobs and life savings because somebody in your industry took advantage of them.

Now, of course I understand that sometimes there is a real question about which side is taking advantage of whom.

For example, here are a couple of stories that have hit the news recently which raise all kinds of questions...

For instance, I read a story today about how one of Britain's richest individuals, Nabeel Chowdery, is suing the Ritz after he lost £160,000 in two hours of gambling.

Now, that is a lot of money to lose in two hours, but that doesn't mean that you didn't know what you were doing. I'm sorry, Mr. Chowdery, but you signed for those chips and you can afford it. I don't feel sorry for you and I hope you lose your lawsuit.

Another story comes from San Francisco, where Omar Siddiqui is facing a financial scandal that would seem massively newsworthy if not for Bernie Madoff having raised the bar so significantly a few months ago.

Siddiqui, a VP at Fry's Electronics, allegedly engineered a system that allowed him to deposit over $165M into his personal business account, including $65M in known illegal kickbacks from vendors. The authorities still don't even know where the other $100M came from.

What did Siddiqui do with his money? He lost it all living the life of a high roller. Seriously, this is a real-life Hollywood movie. If they don't make a movie about this guy, I'll be disappointed.

Despite only [?!?]? having a salary of $225,000, nobody seemed to question the fact that he owned a Ferrari, a Mercedes and a Palo Alto town house. Or that he could run up markers at dozens of casinos, totaling pretty much all $167M of the money he stole. Nobody noticed that he has been sued at least a half-dozen times in the past decade for not paying gambling losses. Or that he bet $200K - about his yearly salary - per hand when playing blackjack. Or that he had a $18.5 million lien on his property for unpaid taxes.

The question I am asking is: How did this NOT get noticed? If not by his co-workers, then why not by the casinos that were issuing him markers?

In their defense, the MGM is quoted in the story as saying, "If a person has a million or 2 million in his account, how are we supposed to know where it came from? It could be money he inherited from his mother."

True. And I am sure you never did a credit check on him either. And I am sure that credit check didn't mention the lawsuits, debts, and liens accumulating in several states.

Let's face it. This was a situation where a bad person was enabled by bad people to do bad things. But at least it seems that this is something of a victimless crime. Maybe he took $65M or more, but that came from illegal kickback payments anyway. All of the people he owes money to were either complicit in his corruption, or willfully blind to it.

Go to jail, dude.

And to all of you hoping to see any of the money Siddiqui owes you... too bad. You all did everything you could to milk as much money as you could from somebody who was either very ill or living a lie - and maybe you didn't know exactly what the problem was, you knew something wasn't right and you still did it. So I don't feel sorry for you either.

Call it a wash.

But there is another story that came out a few weeks ago in the UK that isn't so conveniently cut-and-dried.

Christopher Proudfoot, a 26-year-old financial controller for a telecom company, pleaded guilty to stealing nearly £1million from his company to support his gambling habit.

This looks like a tragedy. Obviously, this kid was smart enough to be a financial controller at the tender age of 22, when he first started his spiral.

But over the course of three years, he stole over £300,000 per year to support his online gambling habit. His weakness was sports betting, and he obviously wasn't too good at it, to lose that kind of cash. This kid must truly have been sick to keep going on with the gambling and deception when he was just getting deeper and deeper in a hole.

Myself, I have a hard time understanding this kind of addiction, not that I don't believe it exists. I obviously like to bet on sports, but I also hate being in debt even more. Sure, I've taken a couple of tough losses in my life, but I've always been able to use those as lessons. I simply don't find anything enjoyable about losing $20K on a single bet and being $100K in debt. So I don't let it happen.

But I understand that a small percentage of the population simply can not stop it from happening once it starts heading in that direction.

For Christopher Proudfoot, there was no way for him to stop, and the result is a promising life that has been completely derailed due to a nasty addiction.

Proudfoot's former employer, Highland Networks, is only a small company with just 25 employees. I am not sure of their profitability, but at that size I am pretty sure they are missing the £1million from their bottom line, but the money is gone and not coming back. And while the story doesn't mention it, I am sure there are a couple of employees wondering if their jobs are safe because of this mess.

And let's look at the casinos involved.You might expect me to chastise them for not being responsible enough, but I'm not going to do that.

£300,000 per year is a lot of money, but it's not out of the realm for somebody who's job is a financial controller for a telecom to be making that amount or more. This was Proudfoot's first offense, so it's not like there was a breadcrumb trail of evidence that would lead the casino to believe that this guy was anything more than a smart, rich, cocky kid who liked to bet a lot of money to impress his friends.

In short, while some closer monitoring might have indicated that Proudfoot was indeed a problem gambler, there really wasn't a lot to indicate that he couldn't afford to gamble at his level - there is only so much information available. And as somebody in the trusted position of financial controller, there is a certain amount of trust and competence assumed, which goes a long way in situations like this.

So while on the face of it Proudfoot's story seems similar to Siddiqui's or Chowdery's, it really is not.

While I have no doubt that Siddiqui was an addicted gambler, I have a hunch that he was very aware of the situation he was involved in, but he got so deep he decided to enjoy it for as long as he could before he got caught. For that reason, I don't have a lot of sympathy.

And as for Nabeel Chowdery, well, just pay the damn debt, you rich arrogant asshole.

However, Proudfoot's situation is kind of a worst-case scenario. Not only was it on a scale large enough to affect many innocent lives, but it was also small enough to slip through the cracks. There really isn't too many ways to spot the Proudfoots of the world before it is too late.

That is why we need to remember and respect the real and important work being done by organizations that treat people suffering from gambling addiction.

If only Christopher Proudfoot, or even Omar Siddiqui, had been in contact with the Gordon House Association, or it's associated organization, Gambling Therapy, maybe their situations could have been nipped in the bud.

According to Ian Semel from Gordon House...

"Gambling Therapy is a multilingual global online help room that offers, help, advice, support, email counseling, online counseling, themed forums, themed online group rooms and an extensive world wide database for all those affected by problem gambling in up to 28 Different Languages, mirroring most of those offered by online Operators.

We currently have a home page in English, German and Portuguese and are about to launch various others including, Spanish, French, Italian and Chinese.

We offer our services in all the languages on our site, however some languages currently have more services than others, such as English, German and Portuguese.

...

As we are a Charity and not funded for this as it is a Global Helpline, we ask the operators for a yearly donation/sponsorship of £6000 per year.

We also send you confidential monthly statistics so you can see the usage generated from your site/s.

Amongst our current Sponsors are, Betfair, 888.com, Party Poker, Paddy Power, William Hill, Ladbrokes, Bet365, bwin, Skybet, Betfred and we are in negotiations with a host of other companies."

I think that, for only £6000 per year, this is the type of socially responsible investment that every gaming company should be involved in. Even if they are not in it for the right reasons and only are hoping for some positive press, it is still a good idea.

And remember, if you are finding yourself in a situation that might - God forbid - someday approach the level of Proudfoot, than maybe you should take a look at the Gambling Therapy site right now and at least read about the services they offer.

It can't hurt.