According to an article in the August 29, 2015 Albuquerque Journal, Attorney General Hector Balderas filed charges against Secretary of State Dianna Duran for fraud, embezzlement, conspiracy, money laundering, campaign law violations, violations of a Governmental Conduct Act, and tampering with public records.
According to the complaint, Secretary Duran withdrew about $150,000 from ATM’s at seven casinos in 2013, and almost $300,000 from eight casinos in 2014. The Sandia Casino appears to have been her favorite, as she is reported to have withdrawn a few dollars short of a quarter of a million dollars from that casino alone during the two years.
According to the article, the source of the money that was withdrawn from Secretary Duran’s accounts was misappropriated money from her campaign finance funds. The investigation apparently got initiated when someone at the bank that Duran uses noticed that she was depositing amounts of money in her accounts that were inconsistent with her salary as a state official.
There was no mention in the article about what Secretary Duran was spending her ill-gotten gains on, but we’ll wildly speculate that much of the money was fed into slot machines at the casinos she frequented. If the money were used for other purposes, it would have been much more convenient for Duran to have withdrawn the money from her bank or local ATM’s than running around the state using ATM’s at far-flung casinos.
Studies nation-wide have reported embezzlement as one of the most common crimes committed by gambling addicts. Surveys taken at Gamblers Anonymous meetings indicate about two thirds of the attendees at the meetings have committed crimes to support their addictions. Although there are likely thousands of gambling-related cases of embezzlement in New Mexico each year, the only ones that end up in the news media are the ones that involve public figures.
New Mexico pays a heavy price for the dubious honor of having predatory gambling opportunities all over the state. It is time for the government to get out of the predatory gambling business.
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