Ten year sentence for lawyer who stole from paralysed man

Thomas McGoldrick, 59, exploited his disabled client's compensation payout to live the high life in a £800,000 mansion, send his children to prep school and enjoy up to four exotic holidays a year.

The big spending solicitor had been courting the elite Cheshire county set whilst secretly hiding debts of £1.4m with money owed on 13 credit cards and 31 loans.

So when client Keith Anderson, 45, won a £1.8 damages payout after a road road accident McGoldrick decided to use most of the money for himself.

He spent £3,500 a year on a golf club membership, £15,000 on a new kitchen, £1,600 on a climbing frame for his children aged eight and 12 and in one summer alone paid for three continental holidays including trips to Barbados and Portugal.

The week's half term holiday to Portugal clocked up £4,000 on a credit card.

By the time police found out about McGoldrick's activitites, trusting father of two Mr Anderson - who is paralysed from the neck down - had been cleaned out of cash and had just £224 left of the damages payout.

Officers discovered the £76,000 annual costs for Mr Anderson's care had instead been spent by McGoldrick on high living and the victim even had to return a bike he bought on loan for his six year old daughter.

Mr Anderson couldn't afford to make a return trip to his home country of Jamaica to visit his father's grave. He was said by police to be "devastated" when he found out about the thefts.

At Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, McGoldrick showed no emotion as he was sentenced after being convicted by a jury at an earlier hearing of deception and false accounting charges following a six week trial. He now faces being struck off.

He faced 53 counts of false accounting, two counts of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, one count of forgery and one count of money laundering between December 1999 and September 2004. Of the 59 charges 17 were unananimous verdicts.

He denied all the charges claiming he was given the money by Mr Anderson as a "gift." Sentencing Thomas McGoldrick, Judge Roger Thomas QC said: "Over a period of about five years from the late 1990s to the 2006 you in fact obtained loans not far short of £2 million.

"There you were as a professional man willing to indulge in quite deliberate and sophisticated dishonesty to obtain various sums of money from financial institutions.

"The other part of the case concerns Mr Anderson. The public expect to be able to place its trust in professional men and in particular in solicitors. Mr Anderson put it rather well himself - he said if you can't trust a solicitor who can you trust.

"He had suffered devastating injuries in a tragic accident in the mid 1990s when he was rendered a tetraplegic. Your firm became involved in his pursuit of compensation. In April 2002 Mr Anderson received he first installment of his compensation - it was a sum of £1/4 million. It was received into the client account that he had in his name at your firm.

"You set about taking the money that he was receiving away from him. Over the course of the next two years you continued to take the money away from him.

"He had then received just short of £1 3/4 million. That was money that was for him to compensate him for the rest of his life for the injuries he had suffered.

"Mr Anderson was living in limited circumstances but you continued to live the sort of life style you had before.

"You joined a golf club and you used Mr Anderson's money on an expensive kitchen.Whatever can be said about your lifestyle, at the very least it is clear that you did not diminish your style of life.

"Mr Anderson was left in the position where he was unable to by Christmas presents for his family. A substantial sentence must follow."

The trial was told Irishman McGoldrick lived in luxury in four bedroomed detached house in the Cheshire stockbroker belt village of Mobberley.

Born in Belfast he was formerly a criminal lawyer who ran practises in Croydon Surrey and Altrincham, Greater Manchester and qualified in 1973.

He drove a Mercerdes and a Jaguar both with personalised number plates with his wife Cheryl appointed a secretary at the practise earning 1,800 a months for a two day week.

The couple's two children both attended the £4,700 a year Hale Prep school and he was a member of the prestgious Mere Golf and Country Club where regulars include football managers Sir Alex Ferguson, Sam Allardyce and opera star Russell Watson.

But McGoldrick was in serious financial trouble and was subject to Law Society audit restrictions whereby he had to have his accounts audited every six months. He was unable to withdraw cash or use credit cards - but by "grossly inflating" the firm's accounts continued withdrawing £6,000 a month from the firm.

He was also said to have been negotiating repayments on one loan of £500,000.

Mr Anderson was born in Jamaica and came to the UK in 1990 and was living in Mitcham, Surrey and working as a contract cleaner.

In 1996 he was driving home from a job in Brighton along the A23 in the pouring rain at 4.30am when his van spun out of control into the central reservation and flipped over He was doing 40mph in a 70mph zone, when he came over the brow of a hill and hit a stretch of water running across the road from blocked gullies.

Mr Anderson broke a vertebra and spent the next 18 months in the Royal Stanmore Hospital. He is paralysed from the neck down.

His wife at the time worked for an insurance firm, and discovered McGoldrick's law firm on a list of lawyers the company used. The firm had a main office in Croydon, where about 20 staff worked, but McGoldrick himself was based in Altrincham.

They signed up with him, and the company and successfully sued West Sussex County Council for negligence, winning £1.8m compensation.

After liability was accepted, but before the amount was awarded, McGoldrick himself took over the case and brought the file up to Altrincham to handle negotiations over the final figure.

But McGoldrick failed to advise Mr Anderson to make a will or get independent financial advice on what to do with the money which was placed into a client account.

Interim payments from West Sussex of £250,000 were made in April 2002 and £350,000 in August 2002 with the final amount being paid out in October 2002.

Mr Anderson's priorities were to buy an adapted house, arrange 24 hour care and a vehicle he could use.

But after £550,000 of the award was spend on fees and the adapted house, McGoldrick advised him not to take any more money out of the client account said he would "find opportunities for him to invest in property to rent out."

He was said to have used a series of "dummy" bills to release the money bit by bit after the payout was received by his firm in 2002, until there was just a small amount left.

The Law Society were alerted to finanical irregularities in 2004 after London accountants monitoring the finnaces of McGoldrick's firm noticed money leaving Mr Anderson's client account for a company which the lawyer was a director of.

They called in McGoldrick for an interview, to take place on November 25, 2004 but he fled to America without telling his wife - later claiming he had thought of killing himself and wanted to "clear his head".

He flew to New York, and over the course of the next two weeks drove all the way down the eastern seaboard, driving across the country and up the West Coast, staying in hotels in the several different cities he stopped in.

It is believed he visited his brother, James - himself a disgraced solicitor who was struck off by the Law Society.

Police were called in and had to inform Mr Anderson in December 2004 his money was gone. The victim he had been planning a family Christmas with his children, and could no longer afford to buy presents after he found out his money was missing.

He told the trial: "It was really shocking, I just couldn't believe it. I didn't let my family know until days after.

"I just couldn't think how like this could happen. Your solicitor is someone you have trust in. He gave me advice on everything. How could he do something like this to me?"

The court heard how Mr Anderson had been refunded via the Law Society's compensation fund. McGoldrick is now bankrupt, and the house is on the market for £789,000.

A spokesperson for the CPS said: "This was an immense breach of trust by someone in a professional position. McGoldrick abused his position as a solicitor to embezzle funds belonging to the clients of his firm and using the funds for his own gain.

"Keith Anderson had been awarded £900,000 for a personal injury action. The bulk of the award was not paid to the victim and McGoldrick did not account for the total funds received on behalf of his client. Instead he drew funds from the client account and utilised them for his own purpose.

"McGoldrick has sought to delay the proceedings at every available opportunity causing further distress to Mr Anderson and significant further expense to the public purse.

"The Crown Prosecution Service is pleased that McGoldrick has finally been punished for his actions."

Senior prosecutor John Lord said: "The sentence reflects the severity of how the actions of one person, abusing his professional position can affect the life of an innocent person".