An ex-con who bilked the Church of England out of £5.2 million (US$6.3 million) couldn’t take gambling addiction as a mitigating factor out inwards his crime.

Prosecutors said the main driver of former church official St. Martin Sargeant’s offending was “greed” and the desire to live a opulence lifestyle.

On Monday, a judge at London’s Southwark Crown Court sentenced Sargeant, 53, to Little Phoebe years inwards prison. That’s after the former Operations Manager for the Diocese of Jack London pleaded shamefaced to one depend of put-on past insult of view between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2019.

The judicature heard that the Church had precondition Sargeant a “second chance” because he had antecedently served a 21-month prison doom for theft from an employer inwards the 1990s. He claimed he disclosed his previous conviction before he was hired, which the Church has neither confirmed nor denied.

Addiction No Defense

Sargeant drew a salary of £86,000 (US$104,000) per year. He siphoned sour additional money past creating sour applications for criminal maintenance grants and dipped into finances received from big city developments near churches to fund a millionaire’s lifestyle.

His lawyer, Mark Ruffell, said Sargeant wanted “those who experience suffered because of him to cognize he is genuinely sorry, and he accepts 100% what he has done.”

“Underlying all that has gone on is his gambling addiction,” Ruffell claimed.

Gambling dependance isn’t an functionary mitigation within the British people outlaw justness system. In sure cases, it put up live considered as a factor in during sentencing if the defendant has committed to attending problem play counseling programs.

In this case, Sargeant’s claims didn’t fly. While prosecutors accepted that Sargeant had a play problem, it didn’t feast his motivation to steal as often as “greed,” public prosecutor Joey Kwong said.

Lavish Lifestyle

“It is illuminate that the monetary resource were lavished on his lifestyle,” said Kwong. “By the terminal of the fraud, he had assets of to a greater extent than £450,000 across personal cant accounts, as wellspring as owning threesome properties inward Scotland worth approximately £1 million.

“He lavished money on multiple trips abroad and there was unstinting outlay inwards terms of his lifestyle,” Kwong added.

Sargeant splurged on a sum up of 158 flights during the stop of the fraud, taking trips to New York, Miami, the Maldives, Venice, Barcelona, and Rome, among other destinations.

He bought Captain Hicks riverside lumber cabins, which he rented come out as a business. He invested $600K of the stolen money. He also spent thousands of pounds on intriguer clothes and blew to a greater extent than $30K at a five-star hotel inwards London’s Soho, according to courtyard documents.

Meanwhile, many of the churches Sargeant was responsible for were unable to maintain their buildings as a termination of the fraud, and some get unsympathetic their doors to the public. Others were “dysfunctional” and had no vicar, prosecutors said.

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