Anna, a 51-year-old single mother of two teens, says online slot machine games cost her nearly everything. And even at that point, the Ontario resident says it was hard to stop.
“The amount of money that I spent and lost — it was astronomical,” she told a recent meeting of Gamblers Anonymous in Toronto, which CBC News was invited to witness.
The peer support group has been a lifeline that helped her stop betting and break free from inducements and marketing she would receive from the betting apps, she says.
“If I had gone a little while without gambling, they would literally send me thousands of dollars to say ‘free money’ to keep you going,” she recalled.
