An accountant who was allegedly bullied at work stole £170,000 ($222,000) from his bosses and spent it all in one weekend on cocaine and prostitutes.
Accounts worker Darren Carvill was jailed for two-and-a-half years this week, confessing to 18 fraud charges. He reportedly almost bankrupt car servicing chain Mr Clutch, taking a total of £262,000 ($342,000) from the company over a period of months in 2018.
Fearing he would be caught, the 38-year-old decided to "go out with a bang" with a "weekend of madness" last year.
On August 18, 2018, he went to a club in London named Platinum Lace where he drank champagne and did drugs with three escorts.
According to The Sun, by the end of the night, he had nine or ten escorts with him in a private party and had "blew every penny he had". After realising it was over, he took a train to Maidstone, Kent, where he still lived with his parents.
In Maidstone crown court, it was claimed that Carvill was bullied at work, sending him into a spiral of misery and low self-esteem, and he felt the only way to deal with it was with binges on drugs and women.
To fund his "addiction" to call girls and partying, he filed bogus payments from multiple Mr Clutch franchises to himself, pretending they were for suppliers.
He allegedly initially planned to repay the money, but the fraud got out of control and he thieved a fortune to deal with his "sham and unhappy life".
Speaking to the court, barrister James Ross claimed Carvill had been bullied for almost his entire life and this had pushed him in a "downward spiral".
"He has had a very unhappy life," Ross told the court. "For most of it he has been bullied. He has suffered from very low self-esteem and social awkwardness. He says he was a good employee and worked long hours and did good work. He says his bosses had shown him nothing but kindness. But other than the owners, there was at least one person who subjected him to ridicule and caused a downward spiral."
The barrister added: "He was thinking the money would be paid back but it was deluded thinking that he was merely borrowing the money."
Due to the account worker's actions, some Mr Clutch employees were left without pay for five months and bosses had to borrow money from family members to stay afloat.
Director Alfred Abdulla said the company faced "many years" repaying money borrowed to pay bills and had been left with VAT and pensions problems.
Abdulla added that Carvill, who worked in the company's head office in Rochester, had been regarded "as a respected and trusted employee" during his four years of employment.
According to the Mail Online, the defendant had previous convictions; in 2008, he was reportedly given a suspended year jail sentence at Maidstone Crown Court for embezzling a travel company out of money.
The 38-year-old now faces a financial investigation under the Proceeds of Crime Act to try to recover the money.