Gambler jailed over £1m theft from firm

Published on Tuesday 3 March 2009 21:11

A £6,000-a-week gambler who spent almost £1 million of his employers' cash on online betting has been jailed for 40 months.

Christopher Proudfoot, 26, who became addicted to online gambling, was a finance and credit controller for an Inverness communications firm when he started plundering their accounts to pay off his ever- increasing debts.

He had earlier admitted at Inverness Sheriff Court embezzling a staggering 936,452.32 from HIGHnet over a three-year period.

Depute fiscal Ron Phillips said: "There has never been a dishonesty of this scale which has come before a sheriff court for sentencing."

Sheriff Ian Abercrombie told Proudfoot he was reducing the sentence from five years because he had admitted the offence promptly, was a first offender and regretted his conduct.

However, he said that he had to bear in mind that the "extremely large sum of money" involved and just as bad as that was the fact that Proudfoot was put in such a position of trust.

He told Proudfoot: "It is your good fortune that nobody has had to lose their job as a result of this large sum of money being embezzled."

Proudfoot admitted embezzling the cash between December 2004 and January 2008.

During the first year he transferred 260,000, then 390,000 in the second year and 277,000 in the third year.

The full extent of Proudfoot's gambling problem emerged as the company carried out an exhaustive audit.