As lawmakers consider allowing online casinos in Ohio, one woman is reflecting on how she lost it all from playing blackjack on her phone.
"I owned a very large construction company and our lumber costs skyrocketed from COVID-19," she said. "I had ten homes going and I thought, 'Wow, online gambling. I’ll give it a try and maybe it will help.'"
The woman from Michigan, where online casinos went live in 2021, allowed the Scripps News Group to show her face and use her voice, but asked not to have her name shared for this story.
"Within six months, I lost $2 million — our home, my business, our cars, our retirement," she said.
Online gambling offers players a chance to participate in games typically reserved for brick-and-mortar casinos, but on their phones or computers.
What started with $1,000 for bets on blackjack, matched by a sign-up bonus from a casino, turned into a $25,000 win that first day. That quickly led to losses, and then chasing those losses for hours a day.
"You can do it driving down the road, you can do it in the bathroom," she said. "We would go to a [brick and mortar] casino every now and then and it wouldn’t be a problem. But once this started, it was extremely difficult to stop."
She said she tried to quit, and some online casino operators actually helped.
"Two casinos cut me off immediately within a month," she explained. "But two kept feeding me thousands of dollars every week to keep me going. If I missed days, they would send me money. Thousands of dollars."
It wasn’t until her husband confronted her about missing bills and payments that it finally stopped.
Now, four years later, she’s trying to turn her mistakes into a message by warning others what could happen if a state like Ohio welcomes online gambling.
"I truly don’t want this to happen to someone else," she said. "I don’t think it should have been possible to lose that much in such a short amount of time. It doesn’t make sense for the state to make money in this way off its own people. Just makes me sad."
So far, neighboring states like Pennsylvania and West Virginia have already legalized online gambling.
On top of that, there are many unregulated overseas companies just a Google search away.
"This has a chance to produce a lot more tax revenue for your state, protect the citizens of your state and make sure you get some tax dollars in the process," Trevor Hayes, Vice President of Government Relations at Caesars Entertainment, said during an Ohio Senate Committee meeting on May 22. "This is a chance to bring this out of the shadows and to be regulated and protected and to make sure minors aren’t betting, to make sure we know where the money is coming from and where it’s going."
“Just so everybody understands, this would be 24/7," Governor Mike DeWine told the Scripps News Group's John Kosich last month. "Anybody who’s got an iPhone could basically have a casino there. And the potential for addiction is just massive."
Ohio still waiting for results on impact of sports betting
In the two and a half years since sports betting was legalized in Ohio, the state saw almost $20 billion wagered, before all winning bets were paid. (To be exact — $20,350,983,612 through May 2025, according to newly released data from the state).
And with billions on the line, Tamera Hunter at Townhall II, the Kent-based behavior health organization that helps those with mental health and addiction conditions, argues that's translating into more cases of problem gambling.
"Gambling addiction has severely escalated since then," she said. "We’re definitely seeing through our screening an increase of 25-30% since online sports betting has gone live."
Right now, the only statewide data on at-risk gambling goes up to 2022, which is before sports betting became legal in Ohio. Beginning this summer, state agencies will study the impact of sports betting in Ohio, with those results scheduled to come out later this year.
However, the most up-to-date data from the state does show that every time Ohio expands some sort of gambling, there’s a bump in the number of at-risk gamblers in the state.
In 2012, only 5% of Ohioans were considered at-risk gamblers. By 2022, when sports betting was entering the arena, 20% of Ohioans were considered at-risk gamblers.
And experts say they expect that number to go up, meaning more people will need help.
"We need to be able to keep up the pace, and I’m concerned with us keeping the pace across the state of Ohio with what’s to come," Hunter said.
"It’s really concerning," Derek Longmeier, executive director at the Problem Gambling Network of Ohio, said. "We know the easier it is to access, the more people will participate and it can’t be any easier than the palm of your hand 24/7."
Longmeier added that the new push for legalization differs from sports betting.
"I don’t know Ohioans are clamoring for this like they were for sports betting," Longmeier said. "A lot of the push comes from the online casino operators saying it will bring millions of dollars to the state. But those millions of dollars have to come from somewhere. Where are those coming from? That’s where our concern is. Are you not going to the movies, are you not going to dinner, or are you not paying your rent or are you not getting close to your children. Those are the impacts we’re really concerned about."
In July, the issue of gambling will take center stage as hundreds will make their way to Columbus, which is set to host the National Conference on Gambling Addiction and Responsible Gambling.
If you are dealing with or know someone dealing with a gambling problem, click here.
This story was originally published by Clay Lepard with the Scripps News Group in Cleveland.
