Gambling costs lawyer his job
A solicitor who lost his career as a "tragic" result of gambling addiction has been spared jail for fraud.
Nathan Horsley spent an "eye watering amount" of money each month placing stakes with various gambling firms and started using high credit loans and pawn shops to raise cash to spend.
The 37-year-old has been on trial accused of stealing £17,685 from clients at his firm Hedley's and Co in Fawcett Street, Sunderland, between 2011 and 2013, to help fund his habit.
Horsley, of Ashfield Close, Hartlepool, appeared to wipe away tears as he stood in the dock and was found not guilty of a total of 16 theft charges by the jury.
At the conclusion of the trial, Horsley was given a suspended jail term for seven fraud offences he was found guilty of, by a different jury, last summer.
The offences, committed between 2016 and 2018, involved Horsley placing orders for goods, including fireworks, high value hampers, Thorntons chocolates and M&S giftcards, when he had no money in his bank to cover the costs.
Horsley was not successful in some of the orders he placed but caused an estimated total loss of £2,000 to companies with the ones that did succeed.
Judge Amanda Rippon sentenced him to two years imprisonment, suspended for two years.
The judge told him: "I acknowledge you have spent the last five years in extremely difficult circumstances. You have been punished on multiple occasions in multiple different ways. You are not the man of those years ago.
"Your personal life has been affected. You have lost a great deal over the last five years.
"By your convictions last summer, you will never practise as a solicitor, something you worked hard for."
Judge Rippon added: "I am of the view, and I am sorry you don't think you are, that you are in a terrible addiction.
"The way you were able to gamble, the amount of money you were able to recycle, reload, the way you had to pawn items to get money, use high credit loans to get the money speaks of the appalling thrall gambling holds you in.
"I can only hope when you saw the figures, that were eye watering, that you start to have some understanding of the damage it is doing.”