Scottish Man Steals $1.3 Million To Fund Addiction To Poker

Published on February 4th, 2009 8:42 am EST

Christopher Proudfoot, 28, is facing substantial jail time after admitting to embezzling 936k pounds (about $1.35 million dollars USD) from his firm to pay for his expensive online poker addiction.

Proudfoot lost the money over a three-year period. It is believed that he lost a substantial sum of the money on William Hill, which is a major online gambling website that caters mostly to European players.

The prosecutor in the case said that all of the money had been lost, and Proudfoot had no means of paying any of it back.

How does a person steal that much money from a company?

Proudfoot was the finance and credit controller at the company, meaning that he had access to the company's books (and could alter them). An accountant who is skilled at the art of deception could conceivably avoid detection for a long while, and this is exactly what Proudfoot did.

The walls started crumbling in around Proudfoot about a year ago. His company started to suspect that Proudfoot was siphoning off money from the company, and terminated him. They also called in the police and fraud detectives, who immediately started going through the books of the company (Highland Network).

They quickly came to the conclusion that Proudfoot had stolen nearly a million pounds from the company over a three-year period to fuel his addiction to online poker. Proudfoot fled his parent's home and went into hiding - he was captured soon after.

Christopher Proudfoot has now admitted to stealing the money, and is bracing himself for a substantial prison sentence. He is currently out on bail (and hopefully not playing online poker).

Source: Daily Record