Devout Christian jailed after he fleeced victims out of £2m to chase bogus Spanish lottery winnings
24 September 2023, 20:34
A Devout Christian solicitor has been jailed for four years for scamming his clients out of £1.85million which he used to gamble on the Spanish lottery.
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Hugh Lansdell, 74, was a top lawyer at Hansells firm in Norwich when he fleeced his clients' accounts between 2015 and 2017 to try and unlock winnings of £825,000 he believed he was in line for from a Spanish lottery jackpot.
Lansdell received a letter telling him he was due the winnings but needed to pay £41,000 of the jackpot in supposed "non-resident tax".
The disgraced solicitor has been declared bankrupt after he lost all of his and his wife's money - with the betrayal leading him to divorce.
Lansdell had the demands increase over time as he eventually believed his jackpot was as much as £10 million.
He funded the chase of his fortune by stealing £1.5million from his clients and also embezzling £350,000 from two charities that he was a trustee of.
Lansdell initially told his clients that the money was being invested in a scheme that his sister-in-law was running - but when asked to return the funds by partners at his employer, he could not.
He was struck off in 2019 for the stolen funds and he was sentenced to four years in prison for the charade on Friday September 22.
He was told at his professional hearing that he had "besmirched" the legal profession though he claimed that he would have used his winnings to help his local church if they had been real.
Will Carter, defending, said his client was a broken man said Lansdell was "blinded by faith" in his crimes and that he was a broken man after his fall from grace.
