'Mahowny': A Director's Dicey Move Pays Off Big. The latest tweets from @owningmohowny. Brian Molony is a Canadian self-admitted compulsive former gambler from Toronto, famous for embezzling millions from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the second-largest bank in Canada, to feed his personal gambling habit.

• As Brian Mahowny, Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers a complex and layered performance. His character is constantly tormented and his internal turmoil is physically expressed by Hoffman with an economy of movement and expression.
• 'No Limit' the Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony' by Gary Ross was a most enjoyable read. The true story is about a Canadian banker, Brian Molony, who used his access as a bank manager (one of Canada's youngest) to feed his gambling addiction.

There aren’t many Canadian gamblers more famous than Brian Molony, although the majority of you may know him better by the fictitious name, Dan Mahowny. He’s the surreptitious (former) manager of a Big Five bank in Canada who was convicted of embezzling millions from his employers to fund exorbitant trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas.

The exploits of Brian Molony were grievous indeed, but did not become nearly so famous until Gary Stephen Ross was inspired to author the best-selling nonfiction book, Stung, sharing the tale of his duplicitous gambling addiction. That, in turn, led to the multi-award nominated 2003 film, Owning Mahowny, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Dan Mahowny.

Brian Mahowny True Story

Brian Molony – Doomed from the Start

Although it was never Molony’s intention to travel the baleful path of addiction and self-destruction, his problematic ways started at the young of ten. By then, the Toronto native was already a big fan of the race track, and soon became the local bookie for his school mates.

Brian was an extremely intelligent young man. He had a way with numbers, a passion for writing, and a dream to become a financial journalist. When he graduated from the University of of Western Ontario, however, he scored so high on his aptitude test for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) that they invited him to join their management trainee program straight out of college.

He accepted, and started out by learning all the ins and outs of the business. He moved up very quickly from teller, to savings, foreign exchange and loan accounts, before being entrusted as a “floating” manager across the CIBC’s enormous network of 1,600+ banking branches.

It Was Just Too Easy…

Although he had a great job, it didn’t pay all that well – abut $10k per year. He didn’t have fancy clothes, and was known to carefully budget the little money that he had. While his frugal appearance back home in Toronto remained unchanged, he was actually covering up an enormous secret.

Brian Molony

Brian Molony had access to pretty much anything and everything in the CIBC, making it incredibly easy – and all too tempting – for him to embezzle money. When the Canadian gambler in him became too strong to resist, that’s exactly what he did.

He began by approving false loans, then depositing that money into an account set up by the Las Vegas casino, Desert Palace, for the sole purpose of allowing players to make discretionary deposits. The exorbitant betting and first-class style he exuded in Atlantic City and Las Vegas earned him thousands of dollars worth comps from Caesars; everything from luxury hotel rooms to flights on the casino’s personal Lear jet.

Molony had already lost millions of dollars at that point, but he just couldn’t stop. He was determined to win it all back. He even promised himself he would repay the CIBC and quit gambling as soon as he won enough to do it. But that, of course, never happened.

Authorities Catch Up To Molony

On April 26, 1972, Brian Molony was at the Caesars Atlantic City. He had a bad run that day – one of the worst he’d ever experienced – losing a million dollars at the tables. The following morning, it was all over.

Brian was arrested by federal officers on April 27, 1982, charged with embezzling over $10 million from the CIBC. In November of 1983, he pleaded guilty to the charges, and was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison. Upon release, he began community service for restitution, including traveling North America to speak about the woes of gambling addiction.

According to reports, the infamous Canadian gambler has straightened up his life. Brian Molony is now married with children, and works as a private business consultant.

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The film is based on the true story of a Toronto bank vice president who began by stealing exactly as much as he needed to clear his debts at the track ($10,300) and ended by taking his bank for $10.2 million. So intent is he on this process that he rarely raises his voice, or his eyes, from the task at hand. Philip Seymour Hoffman, that fearless poet of implosion, plays the role with a fierce integrity, never sending out signals for our sympathy because he knows that Mahowny is oblivious to our presence. Like an artist, an athlete or a mystic, Mahowny is alone within the practice of his discipline.

There have been many good movies about gambling, but never one that so single-mindedly shows the gambler at his task. Mahowny has just been rewarded at work with a promotion and a raise. He drives a clunker even the parking lot attendants kid him about. His suits amuse his clients. He is engaged to Lisa (Minnie Driver), a teller who is the very embodiment of a woman who might be really pretty if she took off those glasses and did something about her hair.

He is so absorbed in gambling that even his bookie (Maury Chaykin) tries to cut him off, to save himself the trouble of making threats to collect on the money Mahowny owes him. 'I can't do business like this,' the bookie complains, and at another point, when Mahowny is so rushed, he only has time to bet $1,000 on all the home teams in the National League and all the away teams in the American, the bookie finds this a breach of ethics: He is in business to separate the gambler from his money, yes, but his self-respect requires that the gambler to make reasonable bets. When Mahowny moves up a step by stealing larger sums and flying to Atlantic City to lose them, he encounters a more ruthless and amusing professional. John Hurt plays the manager of the casino like a snake fascinated by the way a mouse hurries forward to be eaten. Hurt has seen obsessive gamblers come and go and is familiar with all the manifestations of their sickness, but this Mahowny brings a kind of grandeur to his losing.

Brian Mahowny True Story

The newcomer is quickly singled out as a high-roller, comped with a luxury suite, offered French cuisine and tickets to the Pointer Sisters, but all he wants to do is gamble ('and maybe ... some ribs, no sauce, and a Coke?'). Hurt sends a hooker to Mahowny's room, and a flunky reports back: 'The only woman he's interested in is Lady Luck.' Certainly Mahowny forgets his fiancee on a regular basis, standing her up, disappearing for weekends, even taking her to Vegas and then forgetting that she is upstairs waiting in their suite. (The fiancee is a classic enabler, excusing his lapses, but Vegas is too much for her; she tries to explain to him that when she saw the size of the suite she assumed they had come to Vegas to get married: 'That's what normal people do in Vegas.') It is impossible to like Mahowny but easy to identify with him, if we have ever had obsessions of our own. Like all addicts of anything, he does what he does because he does it. 'He needs to win in order to get more money to lose,' one of the casino professionals observes.