Former trial attorney Chris Swett‘s gambling addiction cost him a lucrative law career and will soon send him to federal prison.
In March, Swett pleaded guilty to four counts of wire fraud and four counts of money laundering. He stole $1.5 million from his clients and the high-profile firm Motley Rice to help fuel his addiction between 2018 and 2024.
In an exclusive interview with CasinoBeats on Monday, Swett explained how his life spiraled due to gambling addiction, and how he is now helping others with the disease through his Substack Writing from the Inside and an accompanying podcast.
Still awaiting his sentencing date, Swett girded his family in advance.
“I’m letting my family prepare for me not to be here for Christmas,” he said.
The sentence could be up to 20 years.
Two-Year Stretch Gone Bad
Swett, 43, is a South Carolina native who resides on Johns Island in the greater Charleston area. It was there that he built a thriving law career, working at Motley Rice, one of the country’s top class-action lawsuit firms.
By any measure, Swett was successful, with a high-paying job and a family that now features three boys and a daughter. He was also in the throes of a gambling addiction that peaked between April 2022 and April 2024.
Swett noted that he keeps this screenshot on his phone so as not to forget the damage done. The $11 million played at FanDuel during this period was on daily fantasy sports (DFS). South Carolina is among the minority of states that haven’t legalized sports betting.
Swett primarily enjoyed a daily NBA contest with a $3,300 entry fee. The number of his entries during this span was notable.
“A lot of those times I was in trial for weeks,” he said. “I had hundreds of depositions, my kids’ birthdays, and it didn’t matter what day it was; it was an average of 6 entries a day, every single day.”
Swett noted that the loss “came out to over 800,000.” That was just at FanDuel during that two-year stretch. Swett also managed to find a casino in just about every city the job carried him to, including Las Vegas, where he was a VIP at The Wynn. He estimates his all-in loss figure at around $1.3 million.
Life was good until it wasn’t.
“I couldn’t pay my mortgage,” Swett said. “I eventually put a second mortgage on my house behind my wife’s back to chase my losses and to keep gambling, and one thing led to the other. I know a lot of people have gambling addiction, and a lot of people get in financial distress, and they don’t all do what I did.
“But I just took that next step, and I’m ashamed of it, but I wasn’t thinking about it at the time. I was just caught in the middle of an addiction.”
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Swett Plied By FanDuel VIP Incentives
Like most problem gamblers, Swett tried to quit on several occasions. He’s taken full responsibility for his actions, but it wasn’t easy to walk away when incentives kept flowing in from his FanDuel VIP host.
“I’d quit for a week or two, and I’d get an email from my host with offers, whether it be sporting events or just offers for free entries,” he said.
Swett, who traveled a lot for the job, received tickets for NFL, NBA, and NHL games across the country along with free entries. He also received VIP treatment at The Masters on multiple occasions. The one perk that proved most problematic involved a monthly rebate based on his betting handle.
“The perk that really got me was if I were to gamble $750,000 a month, I would get 6% back,” he said. “And so that was my goal. I wasn’t even chasing the money anymore to win the bet or win the contest. If I could enter $750,000 a month, that’s $45,000 a month in promotion money.
“If I just break even, I’m getting $45,000 a month from FanDuel, and it turned into chasing that number. I just kept losing, and I needed more money.”
Swett said his first contact with a FanDuel VIP host came on October 24, 2019.
“Brett introduced himself, and I guess my play was kind of getting up a little bit at that point,” he said. “I’m assuming close to $25,000 a month, because in the email, he says that $25,000 a month in entries qualifies you for a host.”
CasinoBeats reached out to FanDuel for comment, and a spokesperson referred us to the company’s recent letter to Congress, first reported on by Sports Betting Dime.
“VIP customers also have regular responsible gaming touchpoints through their Account Managers. Managers proactively discuss tools such as MySpend, limit setting, timeouts, and self-exclusion, and every email they send includes responsible gaming language and direct access to FanDuel’s responsible gaming tools,” the letter stated in part.
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Writing Starts as Therapy, Ends Up Helping Other Addicts
Asked about the genesis of his Substack, Swett explained how it’s evolved over the last year.
“It started for me as therapeutic,” he said. “I have court-mandated counseling while I’m out on release before sentencing. And one of the things that they encouraged me to do was sort of write about it. I’m gonna be honest with you. I struggled with gambling even after losing everything. You know, I lost my career, but even after I got fired, there were 6 months where I still struggled with gambling.”
Swett added, “Here I have lost everything, and I’m still gambling. It really helped me because I started writing about gambling and the pitfalls. And, I looked in the mirror, and said I’d be the biggest hypocrite in the world if here I am writing this stuff, and I’m still gambling.”
Swett pulls no punches, and the raw nature of his writing prompted messages from a dentist, a financial advisor, and another attorney struggling through the same addiction. Once a fellow professional walking in that same circle, Swett has been managing a Waffle House for the past year.
“They gave me encouragement to keep writing because one of them said, ‘Hey, man, you probably saved my life,’” Swett said. “Because he said he basically didn’t want to live anymore.”
He added, “If I can help one person, it’s worth it.”
The post Gambling Addiction Cost Chris Swett His Career, Ex-Attorney Seeks to Help Others as Federal Prison Looms appeared first on CasinoBeats.
