A construction consultant has been sentenced to over two years in prison after siphoning more than £700,000 from struggling companies to fund his casino gambling.
Wesley Grainger-Smith, 66, from Winthorpe, Nottinghamshire, was sentenced to two years and four months at Lincoln Crown Court after admitting to five counts of fraudulently removing company property.
Between 2014 and 2017, Grainger-Smith funneled a total of £702,050 from four separate companies into his personal casino gaming account. Despite not officially holding a directorial position in any of these businesses, he managed to gain significant influence over their appointed directors, allowing him to withdraw large sums of money with their awareness, according to the Insolvency Service.
The funds were taken from multiple firms, including £230,810 from Eagleport Ltd, £110,250 from Smiths Constructions Ltd, £84,600 from Smiths Construction Services Ltd, and £276,390 from Smiths Construction Specialists Ltd.
Shortly after these transactions, all four companies sadly ceased trading, highlighting the devastating financial impact of Grainger-Smith’s actions.
What is interesting though is that investigators later found that approximately £570,000 in cash deposits had been returned to the companies.
Grainger-Smith did claim that he had repaid most of the money using his gambling winnings but the Insolvency Service stressed that his reckless use of company funds was entirely unjustifiable and deserving of punishment.
Furthering this, Grainger-Smith’s fraudulent activities were not his first brush with financial misconduct. He was declared bankrupt in March 2017 and subsequently banned from serving as a company director for five years due to his mismanagement at Eagleport Ltd.
Moreover, because of additional investigations into Smiths Construction Specialists Ltd led to an additional 10-year disqualification in June 2019.
Mark Stephens, chief investigator at the Insolvency Service, condemned Grainger-Smith’s actions by suggesting that Grainger-Smith was not “acting in the best interests of the four companies where he said he acted as a consultant” and his intentions were instead to “recklessly gamble with company money.”
What’s more, the directors of the companies Grainger-Smith took money from “will continue to be prosecuted” to determine whether they “deliberately and fraudulently put money out of the reach of creditors.”
