Scottish Bank Employee Has Escaped from Prison After Stealing £36,000 to Finance his Sports Betting

By John Isaac,
Editor at online-gambling.com

John Isaac Editor at online-gambling.com

John Isaac is an editor with many years of experience in the gambling industry. He writes expert articles on card games like blackjack and poker. In addition, he is also well aware of the US gambling laws and the Indian and Dutch gambling markets. You can rely on verified information and insightful details.

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Last updated: March 21, 2022

A corrupt bank employee who scammed £36k in a foreign exchange fraud to finance his football betting addiction has dodged jail. He was working as a monetary detective for HSBC when he swindled a set of friends out of enormous sums of money.

According to the court, he committed a scam in order to gamble “as much as possible.” He appeared in court after the case reports were updated. Sheriff Douglas Keir sentences David Hay to work for free for 300 hours. Hay was also under observation for 20 months and had to pay the victim Garry Small £250 per month for the following 1.5 years.

At a hearing in the past month, the court found out that Garry was pushed to take out the loan of a 29k pound to pay off friends after he offered to invest the money to a fraudster. His ex-wife also got a loan of 25k pounds to pay off victims of the scam.

Representative Anna Chisholm said he overheard Hay contacting Garry via WhatsApp, whom he met through family friends. Hay said he was able to deliver euros and dollars at a “great price” because he got the money from a senior HSBC executive in Paris. He said that he exchanged the money at a cheap rate and then they all went back to the company. The attorney stated that Garry had transferred 20k pounds to Hay and at first, there were no problems as the foreign currency was taken from the defendant’s house on many occasions.

Hay Was Convicted by the Sheriff’s Court in Edinburgh

She stated that Garry then worked as a “middleman,” friends sent him the cash he had sent to Hay. But in Aug 2018, Garry made a few transactions of £6,650, £5,000, and £2,100, with never received foreign currency.

In the same month, the victim Matthew Wright also sent £4,500 to Hay, but he did not ever receive the dollars he paid. On the same day, Robert Bell sent 10k pounds and never received the requested amount in euros. Another victim was also Stephen Thomson who told the court that he paid £7,000, which he never gets back.

Hay Used WhatsApp to Communicate with Victims

The court listened that David delivered a message on WhatsApp to Garry in Sep 2018 saying that Malcolm Scott, the chief executive of HSBC, would return all the cash.”

“Enquiries have established Malcolm Scott does not exist (and) does not work at HSBC,” – said Ms. Chisholm.

She also stated David told Garry on WhatsApp that Peter Roy is a currency supplier. The court stated that Garry allegedly received text messages from Mr. Roy, and when his trust was restored, he restarted sending funds to Hay in exchange.

Another victim who was involved was Allan Preston. He also sent money which later vanished. However, later one, the police got in contact with Peter Roy who did work for HSBC and he told the court that he was the one who contracted Hay as a financial investigator, but he never even heard of the currency scheme. Hay, later on, stated that he did what he did in order to fund his gambling addiction, particularly his addiction playing on Bet365.