Bank boss gambled with stolen £10m
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During a four-year fraud, Graham Price, 58, persuaded 84 individuals to invest a total of £3.5m in a bogus property scheme and used the money, together with a further £6.9m stolen from the Halifax bank, to support a lifestyle as a high-rolling gambler, spending £1m on racing tips and buying shares in 13 horses.
Price, who will be sentenced today at Swansea Crown Court, was arrested last November after an auditor found an IOU for £7m in the safe of the Halifax counter-service he ran in Gowerton, Swansea. He admitted 43 counts of theft and deception and asked for 263 similar offences to be taken into consideration.
Jennifer Ellis, who worked for Price's investment company and lost her £120,000 life-savings, said that her trust had been built up gradually. "He would say: 'If you put £5,000 in I will double it in six months', and he did.
"I never saw him as much as look at the sporting pages of a newspaper in all the time I worked with him. They say the worst criminals are respectable and quiet people and that was certainly true in his case."