Thieves let gambler send son to the East (10)

'thieves' is the definition.
(peculator is a kind of thief)

'let gambler send son to the east' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'son' could be 's' and 's' is present in the answer.
'to' is found in the answer.
'east' could be 'e' (synonyms) and 'e' is found in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).

Can you help me to learn more?