Now he told Bender what he was about to do. Up until that point, he had put on a brave face for Bender, saying he would accept responsibility and serve his time.

Timothy Bender, a Cleveland tax attorney who had been advising him on the IRS’s investigation into his embezzlement. “That’s what I’m going to do,” Stevens said, and promptly hung up. Then Stevens told Gurbst that he was going to kill himself. Gurbst said he would pass along the request. Failing his daughters had been the final blow. Stevens had a request: “Please ask the company to continue to pay my daughters’ college tuition.” He had received notification that the tuition benefit the company had provided would be discontinued for the fall semester. Stevens parked his Jeep in the gravel lot and called Ricky Gurbst, a Cleveland attorney whose firm, Squire Patton Boggs, represented Berkman, where Stevens had worked for 14 years-until six and a half months earlier, when the firm discovered that he had been stealing company funds to feed his gambling habit and fired him. He had raised funds for these green fields, tended them with his lawn mower, and watched his daughters play on them. Then he headed to the Jefferson Kiwanis Youth Soccer Club. He placed the letter and the check in an envelope, drove to the Steubenville post office, and mailed it. “I’m so sorry that I’m putting you through this.” “Our family only has a chance if I’m not around to bring us down any further,” he wrote. He wrote that he was “crying like a baby” as he thought about how much he loved her and their three daughters.

A former chief operating officer at Louis Berkman Investment, he gave her careful financial instructions that would enable her to avoid responsibility for his losses and keep her credit intact: She was to deposit the enclosed check for $4,000 move her funds into a new checking account decline to pay the money he owed the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas disregard his credit-card debt (it was in his name alone) file her tax returns and sign up for Social Security survivor benefits. Stevens, 52, left the casino and wrote a five-page letter to Stacy. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

How to stop gambling at casinos