Is sleep apnoea now being used as an alibi for stealing? Well apparently, that’s what a Manhattan agent reasoned out in court after stealing a total of $25 million. This travel agent (whom I refuse to name simply because it feels wrong for me to give her further embarrassment, but if you’re curious, ask the Manhattan Supreme Court Justice) is now sentenced for up to six years in prison.
“I’m not sure what I was thinking at the time, it may have had something to do with the undiagnosed sleep apnea that I apparently suffered from for many, many years.”
The said agent admitted stealing $17 million from American Express. This was done through fraudulent charges on defunct business travel accounts. The other $8 million the agent stole from a defense contractor by systematically over billing them for travel booked through her company Tri-Pen Management Corp.
The agent blamed her crimes for lack of sleep, leaving her drowsy and confused during the day. This got me thinking whether lack of sleep caused by sleep apnoea can really impair a person’s judgment this severely. It is well known that lack of sleep due to sleep apnoea can lead a person to feel drowsy during the day, lose energy, impair memory and concentration and can make someone irrationally irritable. Apparently, it is not just that. Sleep apnoea has a direct impact on a persons’ ability to make moral judgment.
A study was done at the Walter Reed Institute of Research showing that sleep deprivation resulted in longer response latencies for moral personal dilemmas. This means that if a person is sleep deprived, they are slower to deliberate moral personal dilemmas thus leading them to more likely make a wrong judgment.
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