runadrum: October 2007

Quickest way to the poorhouse .......

........ usually !

is it worth it ?

A "female Walter Mitty", who lived the lavish life of a footballer's wife after milking millions from two companies, has been jailed.

Sharon Bridgewater, a finance chief stole £2 million after hiding her criminal past to get a job at Bloomsbury-based marketing company Hicklin Slade & Partners. She blew £90,000 on a state-of-the art entertainment system, and similar amounts on luxury holidays and expensive furniture.

London's Southwark Crown Court heard her £100,000 kitchen featured in a glossy magazine write-up as one the best 25 in the country. She also squandered another £150,000 on her live-in lover's birthday, buying him a £70,000 Ferrari Spider to add to their "jaw-dropping" collection of supercars which included BMWs, Porsches and a 50-year-old classic Speedster. Bridgewater purchased properties in Spain and the UK, including a £650,000 converted barn. She also dined at top restaurants, including the Mandarin Oriental and Gordon Ramsay's at Claridges.

Jurors heard the company director's many thefts usually saw money simply transferred to a dormant company she had set up years earlier and used in a previous fraud. Other times she "brazenly" paid for luxuries direct from the company account. Even when the company ordered a round of redundancies to cope with their unexplained cashflow problems, she continued to milk the company for every penny she could get.

Having handed in her notice, she found another job and within weeks the "greedy" 36-year-old "lapsed accountancy student" was milking small West End radio recording company Universal Sound Principles out of £55,000. Her life of crime finally hit the buffers after Hicklin Slade

asked auditors to probe the company's "parlous financial state". Even when confronted by her rampant dishonesty, she did her best to lie her way out of trouble, leading to the arrest of one of her colleagues.

Bridgewater, who lived in Sudbury, Suffolk, before moving to Lomond Close, Basingstoke, Hampshire, pleaded guilty to 16 counts of theft between August 1999 and May 2005. The woman, described by her barrister as a "female Walter Mitty", also admitted two charges of furnishing false information and one of perverting the course of justice by attempting to hide assets following a High Court freezing order after her arrest.

but the main question is : is it worth it if wealth means you end up looking 50 when you are only 36 !

Been Quiet Again

Not played much poker lately due to domestic duties - extremely unusual for me !

Still play the Hendon Mob Forum League games on a Tuesday on Full Tilt, although had not troubled the leaderboard after 6 rounds. Thankfully I've made the lower reaches of the money in the last 3 I have played so my position is at least now respectable.

The above hand came fairly early on which helped a lot !

Normal service to be resumed when my PC is reconnected ..........