His 48th birthday on September 15 last year was an impressive affair. It was a time to party, and his friends loved his generous hospitality. He wore Savile Row suits and spent his life on a private jet commuting between Britain, America and his fabulous £1.5 million second home in a wealthy suburb of San José, Costa Rica. As chief executive of BetonSports, the former Ladbrokes manager had become used to the high life, and revelled in his new-found status and wealth.

Everyone here knows who he is - and the fact that he is facing the rest of his life behind bars.'įive months ago, David Carruthers headed one of the hottest companies on the London Stock Exchange. 'He seems a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

'He rarely smiles and doesn't say much,' says a hotel worker. They, equally embarrassed, do the decent thing and studiously ignore him.īoth he and they know that he will be back within the hour if he is not, he will have violated his bail and risks being slung back in jail. He doesn't glance up at the hotel lobby staff - he is embarrassed both by his incongruous appearance and the electronic shackle fastened securely around his ankle, which marks him out as a criminal.

A shambling Scotsman, sallow-faced and dressed in a tracksuit and T-shirt, emerges from a lift, shuffles past the giant aquarium that dominates the lobby and makes a bee-line for the revolving exit door. Caroline Graham and Nick Gilbert report on the players who broke the bank with a busted flush.Īt precisely the same hour every day, a pathetic scene unfolds in the smart, upmarket foyer of the Clayton On The Park Hotel in St Louis, Missouri. They cash in £1.5 billion of their chips and distance themselves from their own firms - just as the US outlaws them, causing a multi-billion-pound share crash.

Listen to part one of Christmas at Gunpoint, narrated by Anthony Horowitz, hereĪ tiny group of online gambling entrepreneurs float their companies, which then shoot into the top 100 British businesses.

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