When gambling runs out of control, it can wreck the lives of entire families.

LAU Kin-chung appears smart. The 40-year-old businessman thinks and acts fast. He is constantly on the go, attending meetings, socialising, zipping off to seal business deals - and lying to cover his tracks.

So smart is he that for almost three years, no one realised all the meetings and business contacts were bogus. He just had a problem, a problem he did not know about. But neither did his family - until the day they received a phone call from a stranger requesting money.

'A loanshark called out of the blue and demanded more than $100,000 if we wanted to bail Kin-chung out,' his sister Kar-lai recalls. 'He had been gambling in Macau but none of us even knew he gambled.

'We complied with the demands because we thought, 'What if they chop him up?' We were too afraid to call the police. Also, it is a matter of face. No Chinese family likes to admit it has problems.' But no sooner was that debt paid than someone else called demanding money. 'We paid millions of dollars in total to cover just some of his debts. We come from a well-off family but after making these huge payments we began to feel the financial strain.' The Laus realised that university-educated Kin-chung had a serious problem: he was a pathological, or compulsive, gambler.

While there is a dearth of official statistics or research to indicate the extent of the problem in Hong Kong, overseas experts estimate three per cent of the global population is addicted to gambling.

Samaritan Befrienders Hong Kong says there is no data on the number of suicides caused by addictive gambling or failure to pay gambling debts. Kar-lai is not surprised. 'Having a compulsive gambler in our family, we've become more aware of reports about gambling or debt-related deaths. You can be an addict whether you are educated or not.