Man who ‘let his family down’ by gambling stolen £450k sentenced to prison

A son who gambled away his elderly mother’s savings and investments has been given a 28-month jail sentence.

Richard Sneddon, 68, from Dechmont, West Lothian stole £450,000 from his mother Dorothy over a 12-year period after he was granted financial power of attorney when she started showing signs of dementia.

The theft was only discovered after his mother’s death, when inheritance arrangements forced him to confess to his siblings and extended family that the money was gone.

‘Let his family down’

Sneddon’s lawyer, Alan Jackson, described his client’s addiction as “a dark secret that didn’t really come to light”.

He added that “he did, with the encouragement of his children, admit to what he’d done. He’s taken steps to quit gambling but that’s perhaps far too late in the day.

“He feels he’s let down his whole family.”

Breach of trust

Sheriff Susan Craig stated: “None of the mitigating factors weigh sufficiently against the significant breach of trust, the period of time that this happened over, and the large amount of money for me to decide that there is an alternative to custody. There isn’t.”

She explained that the sentence was reduced from three years due to Sneddon’s guilty plea, but that prison time was necessary to ensure “that the public are deterred from carrying out crimes of this type”.

The Sheriff highlighted how his vulnerable mother was “a charitable person in life”, and though she “personally would not have suffered” from his actions, the rest of his family and the charities she had planned to leave money to failed to receive what she wished to give them.