SINGAPORE, Oct 15 — She is petite, medium-built and has black hair. That much is clear about the high-stakes gambler who chalked up huge losses at Harrah’s Casino in Las Vegas over two years ago.
Investigators believe she has a Singapore passport, skipped town more than 18 months ago and had since returned here. Going by her Nevada driver’s licence, in which she gave her name as Julie Tay Eng Eng, she is 60.
Harrah’s wants its money back, and has asked the courts here to enforce a US court order to get her to pay up.
But investigators both in the United States and Singapore are not having much luck.
She is believed to have been a Nevada resident, owning two properties. But she sold one property four years ago and the other in January this year.
She had a Nevada address, but it turned out to be just a registered place of business in name. She was even listed as president of a US firm known as Simondy Corporation, but she severed connections from it four years ago.
It appeared that the casino had enough confidence in her credit-worthiness. It extended her a credit line to gamble, which had ballooned to US$558,894.35 (RM1.9 million) by December 2007. Then Julie Tay, and her various aliases, was gone,
Believing that she could be found here, US lawyers for Harrah’s placed advertisements in The Straits Times and Lianhe Zaobao four times in August and September last year to notify her of the case. No answer.
In her absence, Harrah’s obtained default judgment against her in the Nevada courts in February this year. She was ordered to pay up the money she owed, plus US$5,000 for lawyer fees and US$2,838.78 as interest payments.
The following month, the casino hired lawyers from Rodyk & Davidson to obtain a High Court writ to get the US Nevada state judgment enforced here. To do so, they had to serve the writ on her within six months of its issue to give notice of the court action.
But investigators here are just as stumped as their American counterparts as to her whereabouts. They checked out an address in Marine Crescent and an office in International Plaza in Anson Road. Both proved to be false leads.
Last week, lawyer Foo Maw Shen had to go before the High Court again to obtain another six months’ leave to serve the writ.
Harrah’s move against Tay is the second such case of a foreign casino turning to the courts here to recover debts from a gambler.
Last year, the High Court ordered Singapore businessman Poh Soon Kiat to pay up some S$6.6 million (RM16 million) he chalked up in gambling losses at the Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas.
Poh appealed against the judgment that was heard earlier this year. It is now before the Court of Appeal.
It is believed that a handful of casino operators abroad have hired lawyers here to recover debts owed by Singapore-based clients ranging from a few hundred thousand to a few million in US dollars.
Lawyers say the firm can still ask for another extension from the courts if they can explain why they still cannot find her. There is a six-year time bar to such civil claims. — The Straits Times
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