Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty
The details of two recent, high-profile illegal-gambling indictments read like a screenplay by Martin Scorsese, with NBA players and members of the New York Mafia rigging poker matches and using insider information to bet on basketball games. But for some, the news was more personal. When Diana first heard the story, she thought, Thank God, people are going to be talking about this. She’d had no idea which signs to look out for when her husband was gambling away around $300,000 on DraftKings and FanDuel. “Being addicted to casino gambling is completely different,” she says. “Sports betting is so easy to hide.”
Mobile-betting apps are legal in most states and provide a bottomless pit of wagers, from the outcome of a game to the number of assists made by a specific basketball player to the speed of a baseball pitch. While these companies find more ways to profit, searches seeking help for gambling addiction have increased by more than 20 percent since 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down a law that had banned most sports betting in the U.S.
And it’s not just the gamblers themselves who are affected; their partners and spouses in particular deal with lies, betrayal, and often the shock of a drained savings account. Once Diana’s husband ran out of money, he was taking out payday loans with interest rates of up to 300 percent to fuel his habit. “If I had realized my husband had hundreds of thousands of dollars of gambling debt all in one go, I probably would have been like, ‘Bye,’” she says. “But for me, it was really a death by a thousand cuts.” I spoke with four wives and girlfriends about how they found out their partners had a sports-gambling problem.
Gary and I had just gotten married in 2005 when I received a credit-card statement with a couple thousand dollars of gambling charges on it. I absolutely lost my mind. We were in our 20s and broke; I made sure we didn’t spend more than $75 a week on groceries. I got angry with Gary, but I just thought he had made a stupid financial decision. Later, there were other signs. We always watched sports together, and he started having emotional reactions to teams that weren’t our teams. I’d think, Why do you care that the Chiefs just scored a last-minute touchdown?
When we went to Vegas for our wedding anniversary or to the race track, he’d disappear for longer than expected. In 2017, while on vacation in Hawaii, I got an email notification that $3,500 had been taken out of our account. When I confronted him, Gary claimed it was a down payment on an El Camino, a car I’ve always wanted. I didn’t believe him and knew something was amiss. I was managing all the finances and started to pay closer attention. Then I got really sick with Crohn’s disease and had surgery. At one point, I was down to 89 pounds. Gary used my illness to say, “Why don’t you let me take over the money stuff?” He was a really great caregiver, but he also used the situation to his advantage.
While recovering from surgery in bed, I started getting Facebook messages from people I barely knew saying my husband owed them money. The messages started getting more threatening and included Google images of our house. A black car with tinted windows pulled up to our driveway and just sat there. At one point, $30,000 disappeared from our account. Gary tried to blame it on his company needing him to front them money. I said, “That makes no fucking sense.” Every time I’d ask him questions, he’d deflect or get angry. I had a hunch it was sports betting since money would go missing and then it would come back. But it was hard for me to keep track of everything because he was changing the passwords to our bank accounts.
We started seeing a counselor who helped me realize that Gary was lying through his teeth. Then, in spring 2019, he got a call from the FBI to testify in front of a grand jury. He told me he was involved in illegal-gambling rings but assured me the agents were not coming after him. He just had to provide some information. Gary made it seem like he was on the fringe of it all. I was totally freaked out. I got back into our accounts and saw the money flying, anywhere from $5,000 to $35,000. I changed all the passwords and never let him into our accounts again.
The second time the FBI agents asked my husband to testify, I went with him. I sat in the interrogation room, and that’s when I learned he had been involved in multiple illegal-gambling rings and was using credit. He gambled every cent we had, probably a couple hundred thousand dollars. By this point, he’d lost his job, was cut off from the bank accounts, and had burned all the bridges with the bookies. How did he perpetuate the addiction? That’s when the apps came into play. If he put gas in the car or bought groceries, he’d also buy $40 in betting gift cards and use those to play. I started seeing some of my things, like my vinyl collection, for sale on Nextdoor. He was asking for money from friends and using my illness as an excuse. I was trying to keep my business afloat while working part time to get health insurance, so I just accepted the situation. I made him move into the spare bedroom.
The last bet he ever placed was on September 8, 2020. The next day, on the morning of my 40th birthday, we woke up at 7:30 a.m. and Gary said, “Let me make you coffee.” Then our Doberman started going crazy and there was banging at the door. Gary looked out the window, came back into the bedroom, and started pacing. I threw on my robe and walked to the front of the house just as 30 or so officers from the FBI and local police were getting ready to bang down my door. The next thing I knew they were in my house searching for our devices. They told me Gary had stolen upwards of $700,000 from his previous employer. They took him away, and when they pulled out of the driveway, I started sobbing hysterically. I still loved him. He wasn’t himself, but I knew deep down he’s a good person.
I don’t think I really stopped crying until they released him a few days later. I went to pick him up and I said, “Your only option is to get help.” I had found a therapist who specialized in gambling, and I said, “You call him or I leave you here on the sidewalk.” He made an appointment before we even got home. We had a lot of fights leading up to his sentencing hearing because he didn’t want to tell our family or friends. Finally, I said, “I need support. This isn’t about you.” He told everyone, and they all showed up to court on that day. He pleaded guilty to fraud charges and in April 2022 was sentenced to 24 months.
Gary ended up serving a little over 11 months in prison. I went to visit once a month, and I picked him up to come home in August 2023. He’s certified as a peer recovery coach and helps gambling addicts. It’s been really healing for him and part of the reason he’s been able to stay bet free. I don’t constantly worry about him relapsing, but I do have some PTSD. A few months ago, I had put in the wrong password and couldn’t log in to my bank account. I had a straight-up panic attack. My heart was racing, and I burst into tears. —Autumn, 45, public-relations executive
I’ve been with Luke for roughly a year, and though we don’t live together, it’s a serious relationship. He works in the finance world, and when we started dating, I immediately noticed that he was into sports gambling and that all his friends do it too. There’s a ton of peer pressure to bet. We’d watch football together and he was always checking his phone. He’d place $500 bets and I was like, “What if you lose?” Earlier this year he showed me the DraftKings app, which said he had spent $300,000 on bets over two years. I was like, “Are you insane? That’s so much fucking money. You can buy an entire house!” He was kind of laughing about it and said, “Don’t tell anyone.”
Since I couldn’t tell any of our friends, I went on Reddit and wrote, “Is this a red flag or just something some people do when they have the money?” He makes six figures, and his family is rich. On Reddit, people were saying, “We lost our house to gambling.” I sent the post to him, and that was a huge mistake. He was pissed, especially when he read the comments. He called me, screaming, and said, “All these people are telling you to leave me. Don’t listen to them. I don’t have an addiction.” That’s when I was like, Holy shit, he does have an addiction. You don’t get that angry and defensive over something that’s just fun to you.
In the summer, Luke told me he was going to stop gambling for a month. Then he pulled out DraftKings while we were watching a football game. I was like, “Wait, hold on. I thought you quit.” He said something about how the season is starting and turned his phone away. I have never been super-serious about telling him to quit gambling. For now, I’ve been pretty casual about it. We don’t share finances; we don’t have kids. He also has a golden parachute, so even if he went a million dollars into debt, he would be okay. But I can see this being a future issue. My dad always tells me, “Don’t marry a gambling addict.” I don’t want to get married and find out that Luke’s $500,000 in debt. —Gabriella, 23, legal assistant
Ryan and I met in the summer of 2019 through Hinge. He was so warm, and on our second date, he came to walk my dog in the park. A few months after he moved into my apartment, he said, “I need to talk to you about something.” He told me he didn’t have the money for rent because he had gambled it away. He said he’d struggled with sports betting in the past, but I don’t think I realized the gravity of the situation. I just thought, I’ll spot him one month and it will be all right.
When COVID hit, we moved out of the city. Ryan would watch every single basketball game that was on; we got in fights because he would be refreshing ESPN the whole time while we visited family. I signed us up for couples therapy, but Ryan never mentioned gambling in our sessions and I didn’t know it was such a big issue. After we got engaged, I noticed he would go into the bathroom and have phone calls with his friends who gamble about certain players and scores. Now that I had a ring on my finger, I started to worry about our future. I thought, I’m going to go through his emails and see what’s going on.
One day, he went to a friend’s house and left his computer open. In the search history, I saw gambling websites, and then in his email, there were transactions that included a $6,000 bet he had made to try to help pay for our wedding. I saw emails to his dad where he questioned whether he’d be able to support a family. My heart was sinking. I went to my brother’s apartment for a weekend and convinced myself I needed to get out of the relationship. I had arranged for movers, and I wrote a note that I was preparing to read to him when I got home. But we ended up having a serious conversation, and I didn’t feel like I could go through with it. A few days later, I came up with a list of contingencies for me to stay, including that he had to start going to Gamblers Anonymous and get rid of gambling apps on his phone. Ryan said he was going to try his best to show me he was serious.
Last fall, we moved to another state, where his parents had an apartment they weren’t using. The trouble started when we got our security deposit back from our past apartment. The plan was for him to deposit the check and Venmo me half. I kept asking, “Where’s the money?” He kept making excuses that were not adding up. Eventually, Ryan’s dad told me he had gambled the money along with his first paycheck from work. That was the moment I realized, Okay, this is really a problem. Ryan decided all his paychecks would be directly deposited to me. His dad suggested I go to Gam-Anon meetings to get some support. It helped me see what Ryan was going through as a mental illness. I always thought, Why can’t he just make a better decision? It’s like I was dealing with the gambler and then Ryan. They’re two different people.
The first relapse happened during the Super Bowl last year. We went to a friend’s house, and though Ryan seemed to be acting normal, a few weeks later he admitted to having taken out a cash advance on his credit card to gamble. From that point on, I took over the credit cards and hid them away. For a while, things were great. We paid off the debt. He was doing well in his job and going to GA meetings. We got married, and our families were happy.
A few days after we got back from our wedding, I noticed he was watching football. I was lying by the pool in our building when a guy who also happens to be in Ryan’s GA meeting walked by. He said congratulations and then said, “I ran into Ryan earlier, and he was asking me if I’m doing any fantasy sports.” I went back up to our apartment and asked him flat out, “Why are you asking this guy about fantasy? You’re both in GA.” He dodged the question. I said, “Let me see your email so I can check if there are any transactions I should be concerned about.” He got defensive and denied that he had gambled, but I kept pushing it. Eventually, he said, “You’re right.” I asked him, “Where did you get the money?” A few weeks prior, he had needed the credit card to sign up with a new therapist, so I gave it to him. I turned around for two seconds and he had snapped a photo of it. We had just said our vows and made this commitment to each other; I was really angry.
All our bank accounts are in my name only. I pay the bills and keep a spreadsheet with our expenses. Every few weeks, Ryan goes through these upheavals about the fact that he doesn’t have access to the money and can’t take me on a romantic date. This feels emasculating for him. I come back to the idea that “This isn’t about controlling you. This is about protecting the money from your addiction.” We want to make sure we can still buy a house and give our future kids a good life. —Liza, 33, executive assistant
Erik and I met at work in 2015. I was hesitant to date him, in part because he’s so obsessed with sports. I’m not interested in them at all. I thought sports betting was just something casual Erik did with his friends, like, “Dave, here’s $20 on the Knicks.” I found it annoying that he’d have his phone out to follow a game during dinner. I was actually a little nervous that he was cheating on me because he was always taking his phone to the bathroom or quickly swiping away from things on his screen.
In 2019, a few months after we got engaged, I was on a work trip in Europe and couldn’t get hold of Erik. Normally, he’s very responsive, so I got panicky and called him 20 times in one hour. I thought, Oh my God, he’s totally at some girl’s house right now. Erik called me back shortly after and said, “Everything’s fine. I got a new therapist and was in a session.” When I came home, he sat me down on the couch and said he lost $50,000 or $60,000 on a bet. I later found out it was more like $90,000. I was shocked. But I’m also the kind of person who can turn on crisis mode and say, “We’ll figure this out. I can work a little extra, and you’re going to get a better job.”
Then in April 2020, Erik got furloughed. I became our sole source of income. I prioritized paying his gambling loans because they were higher interest, and I put the bare minimum on my credit cards. I was busy frantically working while he watched sports downstairs. I would catch him in little lies or find out he owed a friend money. I did try going to a few Gam-Anon meetings but found them unrelatable. Most of the people were older and their partners were addicted to poker or slots.
Soon after we got married, I was certain he was gambling again — he was distracted, distant, hiding his phone. I sat calmly in bed and said, “I know you’re gambling.” He initially denied it, and I said, “Show me your bank account.” He gave me his laptop, and that’s when I discovered it wasn’t a few mistakes. He had been constantly gambling every day for years on end. He had bank accounts and loans I didn’t know about. He was converting money into crypto and betting offshore. I downloaded a copy of all his transactions and realized, Holy shit, he was gambling throughout our wedding day. Throughout our honeymoon, he gambled something like $70,000.
The next day, Erik was actually incredibly relieved. He’d been carrying the secret for years, and now I finally knew. But at this point, I realized I needed to protect my own finances and be way more strict about giving him money. I made him get a postnup. I changed the passwords on his accounts.
I will never know exactly how much Erik has bet. He’s relapsed multiple times, but he has essentially run out of any source of money. He’s had gigs here and there but doesn’t have a steady job. He’s destroyed his credit and has been blacklisted from loan companies. He’s still got around $300,000 to pay off. Initially, I told him he had to go to GA meetings, but I realized he was just checking a box. What I’ve come to realize is that the only person who’s ever going to know what’s happening is him, and the only person who can ever decide to get sober is him.
Before we met, Erik had gone to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction, but no one in his life caught on to the fact that he had developed a new addiction. The worst part about sports betting is that he can do it right in front of my face. Now I have daily or weekly conversations with myself where I ask, Is this still working for me? It’s almost like a coin flip about what my future entails. —Diana, 36, writer
Names have been changed.