Online gambling addict stole his gran’s £430k savings to fund habit
A Man addicted to online gambling stole his frail grandmother’s entire £430,000 life savings to fund his habit, a court heard.
darren Gledhill, 30, set up online banking for Sandra Gledhill and then betrayed her trust by ruthlessly plundering the funds over three years.
She moved into a care home suffering from dementia during this time and the crimes only came to light when she was found to be more than £40,000 in arrears for payment of her fees.
Mrs Gledhill was in her 70s when she died in January, leaving her three children with no inheritance because of her only grandson’s crimes. Yesterday Gledhill, a manager with Sainsbury’s, was jailed for 28 months at Bradford Crown Court after pleading guilty to theft.
He wept in the dock as his heartless crimes were outlined and was told by the recorder of Bradford, Judge Jonathan durham Hall QC, that despite having no previous convictions his sentence could not be suspended.
He said: ‘You were a prodigious gambler and I suspect, as there is nothing left, a prodigious loser.’
The judge said the emotional distress caused by Gledhill was ‘beyond calculation’ and he had wiped his grandmother’s account clean.
Gledhill had taken every penny that his grandmother had amassed over a long, frugal and hard-working life, the court heard.
Police investigations revealed that between June 2014 and november 2017 Gledhill stole a total of £434,231 by making 350 bank transfers into his own account. The largest transfer was £10,200 and the lowest was the final transfer in november last year – for just £1.20.
The thefts began when Mrs Gledhill was still able to live at home and her grandson took £43,500 from her account before she moved into a care home in Halifax in June 2015 suffering from vascular dementia, said prosecutor Philip Adams.
Gledhill then continued to plunder the remaining £390,000, only to gamble it away.
After his arrest Gledhill, of Halifax, admitted that the vast majority of the stolen money had been spent on gambling.
Mr Adams said Mrs Gledhill’s three surviving children would have had the money shared equally between them following her death.
Her daughter Lisa, who lives in Australia, said in a victim impact statement that she was shocked by what had happened because Gledhill was a trusted family member.
The court heard that Mrs Gledhill was regarded as being rather frugal and she was proud of the defendant. Abigail Langford, for Gledhill, said the catalyst for the offending was gambling, which began at a time when her client was working away from home a lot and staying in hotels.
‘It was an online gambling addiction,’ she said.
Miss Langford said Gledhill was thoroughly ashamed and consumed with guilt over his offending.
‘He will never be able to repay the money he took,’ she conceded.
‘It causes him great distress now in the cold light of day.
‘He was clearly in the grip of a downward spiral of depression at the time of the commission of these offences, sadly unrecognised by him.’