Mother stole $3 million for lotto tickets

Thursday, August 24, 2006 posted 04:14 AM EDT

By day, Annie Donnelly, 38, a bookkeeper and mother of three from Farmingville, NY, wrote checks to herself and for cash at her medical office job.

By night, she would buy huge strips of $10 and $20 scratch-off tickets and thousands of dollars in lottery tickets on her way home – usually stopping at the same shop.

“She played a lot of lotto,” said a clerk at M&K Cards and Gifts in Lake Ronkonkoma, NY. “I thought she had won a jackpot, otherwise no one could afford to play that much.”

Donnelly, who has been behind bars since her arrest in June, pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of grand larceny. She faces four to 12 years in prison when she is sentenced on September 20.

The family will have to sell their house, with half the money paid toward restitution to the medical office.

“She has a sickness,” said her husband, Scott Donnelly, 42. “She's addicted to gambling and it got the best of her.”

Mr Donnelly said he was blindsided by her arrest and was shocked to learn of the millions she blew on lottery tickets over four years.

“I had no idea it was going on,” he said. “If I did, I would have tried to stop it.”

Mr Donnelly vowed to try to keep their family together, even though it won't be easy to forgive his wife for leaving their kids without a mum.

“Of course, I love her – I'm with her for 18 years,” he said. “When she gets out of jail, she has to get her act together.”

Mr Donnelly lashed out at the store that sold his wife the lottery tickets, saying someone should have tried to cut off a person who was obviously in the grips of a compulsion.

“They didn't wonder how a housewife could spend that much every day?” he asked. “They're making money off it. Why should they be concerned?”

A New York Lottery spokeswoman said the agency takes gambling addiction seriously and has a telephone hot line printed on lottery tickets and machines.

Gambling experts say lottery splurges are among the most common types of compulsive gambling.

But they called Donnelly's obsession stunning, especially because she destroyed a suburban life to feed her addiction.

“This is an extreme case,” said Steve Block, a counsellor with the Gambling Treatment Centre in Manhattan. “It had to be all-consuming.” New York Daily News

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