A solicitor who lost thousands of pounds in bad investments used clients' money in a desperate attempt to recoup it, Teesside Crown Court was told yesterday.
First Edward Bentley flew to Monte Carlo but the casinos refused to accept the single £60,000 bet he had planned to clear his debts.
So he flew back to England to place a bet of £10,000 on a racehorse, with odds of 3-1, but it was pipped by an outsider.
Next he turned to the stock exchange, gambling on the futures market. He put £49,000 into a high-risk trading option, predicting that the FTSE would drop. Instead it went up, leaving him with little more than £1,000.
To avoid a police investigation he drove to Skegness and tried to gas himself in his car by running a pipe from the exhaust into the vehicle, but the engine seized up as he sat there. - Times (Nick Thomas)
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