Hate to tell you this…there is a dark side to Bingo as well. It is all very well for us to rejoice hearing stories of big wins and revelry linked to online Bingo or Bingo Hall games. Let us not gloss over the incidents that prove that Bingo players can behave quite irresponsibly at times.

Not this, Baby Shower Bingo!
Take for instance, the parents of a one-year-old infant. Today, they face imprisonment up to a year for abandoning their child –left locked up in the car with the windows closed –in order to play Bingo at a club in Calle Mancor, Palma in Spain.
Though they claimed that they were checking on the infant frequently, it transpires they were engrossed in the Bingo game for three hours. They did not surface even when the cops arrived and ascertained the vehicle registration and ownership details –an exercise that took a good half hour.

Nickels Room, Beware!
Recently two women aged all of 60 and 85 respectively turned a lazy Bingo game into a tug-of-war in Texas. They were old friends who played regularly at the Del Rio Senior Citizens Centre. One of them suspected that the other had not dropped her nickels in the pot and did a manual check, counting the money out loud. This angered the other who started an argument. The verbal duel soon turned violent and the duo grabbed each other’s hair and clawed their faces. The sister of one of the women also jumped in to lend her support, and all three were bruised. They were admonished for spoiling a fun-game and sent home to cool down. They have also been barred from from playing Bingo at the Centre for 90 days.

Bingo Battery
We have heard of utensils, hair brushes and perhaps flower vases being flung around by angry couples. However a couple in Illinois hurt each other with Bingo daubers! Here is how it happened: Ms Chyrl S Miller returned home after 10 pm one night after playing Bingo. She found the door locked. Though she opened one lock with the key she had, the other had to be unlocked only with the key her husband had.

With growing anger, she hammered on the door to wake up Mr Jerry J Pitts. When he finally came to the door and opened it, she could not control her rage and lashed out at him with her purse. The Bingo dauber fell out and both of them took turns to use it as weapon against each other.
The police moved the couple to the Sangamon County Jail for domestic violence, after finding both injured.

Cheques by Post!

Patricia Barnes had been handling Royal Mail special postal delivery in Norwich, England for 14 long years. She had developed a gambling addiction alongside. To fund her online Bingo craze and slot machine gaming sprees, she stole more than £75,000 in cash and cheques to pay for her addiction to slot machines and online bingo.
The thefts were carried out between April 2007 and June 2008 and were in breach of the highest degree of trust that the public places in postal services. Hence she was sentenced to one year imprisonment. Interestingly, the judge Philip Brooke-Smith, observed: “I accept this was done to support a gambling habit that’s made very easy indeed with the availability of the Internet.”