A financial advisor addicted to gambling swindled the Inland Revenue out of nearly £1million through the business he ran from his garden shed in Hendon, a court heard on Friday.

Charles Earnest Robertson, 59, was jailed for three years after admitting a charge of fraud and four of theft against clients.

None of the proceeds of his scam can be retrieved, Harrow Crown Court heard, because Robertson, of Neeld Crescent, Hendon, spent it on horse and dog racing, ending up destitute on the Isle of Wight.

Anthony Abeil, prosecuting, said that Robertson, formerly known as Wilkins, offered accountancy services to building sub-contractors.

He fraudulently obtained £988,793.76 between November 1987 and July 1996, with 307 claims for rebates on behalf of 62 bogus clients. The sum should have totalled £1,348,827.36 but the Inland Revenue finally became suspicious and held back the difference.

Sentencing, his Honour Judge Barrington Black told him: "At the end of all this there does not appear to be a penny to show for it. It does appear that from all that has been said of you, you lived a very modest lifestyle. You are not loose living or profligate.

"Your addiction was the cause and now you have lost everything."

Between June and September 1997 Robertson stole £7,960 from clients and because they were pursuing him, fled to the Isle of Wight.

He was arrested there on October 13 last year and admitted everything to police, including his long-standing gambling obsession.

Robertson had been convicted in 1972 on 13 charges of theft from an employer and in 1982 for false accounting. He received three years for fraud and 12 months on each of the four theft charges to run concurrently.

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