Cruises are often marketed as floating vacations where families can relax, enjoy endless food, and soak up the sun. For most passengers, that’s exactly the experience they get. But, every once in a while, there’s an incident on board that reminds travelers that things can go wrong, even at sea.

That’s what happened last week on a Royal Caribbean ship docked in Puerto Rico. According to officials, a male passenger reportedly jumped overboard to avoid paying his gambling debts to the cruise line. But cruisers online don’t believe the incident is so clear-cut.

Many commenters have speculated there’s far more to the incident than a simple unpaid tab at the casino. While some are questioning how the situation escalated so dramatically,…

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) – Boelter Window and Siding has officially gone out of business, and now some of its customers are left wondering where their money went.

Boelter Window and Siding was a local contractor for the Mankato area since 1990. In an email to customers on Aug. 29, the company announced it would be going out of business and was filing for bankruptcy.

The difference here, however, is some customers have already paid the company for future work. Work, of course, that can no longer be done, and money that will not be refunded.

“I wrote out a check for just over $20,000 to Boelter and signed the contract for them to start residing my house,” customer Amanda Lappen said.

Customers like Lappen are now stuck in a jam. Much of that…

A cruise ship guest has been charged after fleeing a cruise ship by jumping overboard in a bid to avoid paying a large casino debt.

Guest Jey Gonzalez-Diaz jumped off Royal Caribbean ship Rhapsody of the Seas as it docked in Puerto Rico at the end of a week-long cruise.

He was picked up by a passing jet skier and taken ashore.

US Customs and Border Protection officers later tracked him down in San Juan, Puerto Rico and arrested him.

Further investigations found he owed more than $16,000 to the cruise line.

This was ‘almost exclusively associated to casino and gaming expenses,’ the federal complaint said.

He has been charged with attempting to avoid monetary reporting at a US customs entry point.

If…

I personally have very limited experience on cruise ships. And even less experience in the casinos on cruise ships. The idea of paying exorbitant sums to go out to sea on a craft filled from bow to stern with amenities, only sit inside in a windowless room sort of defeats the purpose. I mean, I swung through the casino on the one cruise I ever went on without breaking stride because it didn’t look one iota different than what you’d find in any other gaming establishment on land. To me, the only difference was we were in international waters, so there was no way of knowing whether an actual Gaming Commission was in charge of regulating these tables and machines. So I kept walking to the bar by the pool where the…

Carolyn E. Hawley, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling at VCU’s College of Health Professions, has gained a deep understanding of the risks linked to gambling through a variety of community-focused research initiatives and shared recent findings on the subject.

Hawley Says Problem Gambling Can Be Hard to Identify

Hawley noted that no national prevalence study on gambling disorder has been conducted in the US since 1998 due to a lack of federal funding, leaving a significant gap in critical data. However, through her own research, she estimates that between six and eight million Americans struggle with gambling-related issues. This includes both…