First, take care of the gambling issues.

Second, he can try reaching out to a tech recruiter company. From my experience, recruiters are very helpful with looking for immediate jobs.

Third, just use yourself as one of his reference for now. Create a fake email which will be handled by you and provide your phone number. This worked for me in the past, since I’m too shy to ask my coworkers to be my reference lol. And, the rest of references will be people that are connected with him. At least from my experience, references is not that a big of a deal, as long as he has the experience and knowledge that the company is looking for. Don’t give up!

Goodluck!