A Belarusian woman accused of borrowing 65,000 rubles (worth over $22,000) from her friends and acquaintances before frittering the money away in online casinos could be sent to prison for up to a dozen years.
Police described the woman, unnamed for legal reasons, as a 45-year-old resident of the city of Brest, the Belarusian media outlet Brest City reported.
Officers have remanded the woman in custody.
Detectives said the woman borrowed money from her friends “under various pretexts” and “constantly delayed paying them back.”
Police said they have evidence that she spent the entire $22,000 losing bets on online casino platforms.
Six people, all residents of Brest, have been left out of pocket as a result, police said.
Investigators have charged the suspect with fraud. They say they are also looking into other “elements of her criminal activity.”
Belarusian Gambling Crimes on the Rise
The case is the latest in a spate of suspected gambling-related crimes in Belarus.
Earlier this month, the Belarusian media outlet SB.By reported that police have charged a resident of Mogilev, Belarus’ third biggest city, with gambling-related theft.
Officers from the Mogilev Regional Executive Committee Department of Internal Affairs have accused a man, also unnamed, of stealing money from his boss.
They say the man, aged 24, stole around 3,000 Belarusian rubles (over $1,000) and spent the cash on slot machines.
The suspect and his boss both work at a state-run company. Police say the suspect found his boss’s locker open and stole a wallet containing the money.
“The accused spent all the money on slot machines the same day as he stole it,” said Alexander Vasilenko, the Deputy Head of the department.
Officers say that when the theft was discovered, the suspect “attempted to conceal his involvement” and “even pretended to help his boss search” for the lost wallet.
Hardware Store Robbed
Last week, meanwhile, the same media outlet reported that a Mogilev-based gambling addict has been accused of stealing goods worth 8,000 rubles (around $2,750) from a hardware store.
The suspect then reportedly sold the goods and used the proceeds to play slots.
Law enforcement officials said the suspect is a 34-year-old man with previous fraud convictions. They said the accused presented forged payment orders and other related documents to store employees.
This allowed him to make off with several expensive construction tools, police said.
In January, the Belarusian government announced plans to launch a national registry of slot machines. Minsk says the initiative is part of a series of major reforms in the gambling industry.
