A MAN defrauded vulnerable people out of hundreds of thousands of pounds by offering to oversee their wills – then gambled away their life savings.

Gambling addict Peter Holbrook, 75, faces a lengthy prison sentence after admitting to multiple charges of fraud over a ten-year period.

He will be sentenced on Monday, but on Friday afternoon a courtroom including some of his victims and their families heard the details of his crimes, which led to him defrauding nine victims of a total of £849,000.

They heard that Holbrook, of Crossfield Close, Oxenhope, targeted elderly and vulnerable people, some of whom have died before the case came to court.

He convinced many of the victims to hand over huge amounts of money on the promise it would be invested.

Instead he either gambled away the money or used it to partially pay back other victims to stop them getting suspicious.

Mr McDonald, prosecuting on behalf of Trading Standards, said: “At the time of the offending the defendant purported to be a financial consultant and will writer, despite having no qualifications to do so.

“He would befriend the victims before offering to handle their probate.”

The court heard that one victim transferred £384,000 from her recently deceased husband’s estate to Holbrook – a sum he then frittered away to feed his gambling addiction.

That victim died earlier this year aged 86. 

Mr McDonald said Holbrook denied the charges twice in police interviews. In one interview he claimed a delay in transferring money back to the victims’ family was due to his upset at having recently lost his daughter to cancer.

The court was told his daughter was in fact still alive, and lived in another part of the country.

In a second police interview he called the children of one of his victims “spiteful and two faced.” He claimed to be a professional gambler who made £100,000 a year. He told police he carried on offering his professional will writing services despite his gambling success “because he liked helping people.”

It was only in his third interview with West Yorkshire Trading Standards that he admitted to his crimes.

Mr McDonald said: “Many victims worked hard all their lives, only to see their life savings gambled away.”

Mr Bachelor, defending Holbrook, said he had been of good character before becoming a gambling addict.

He had written to the court to say he wished he could turn back the clock, and viewed himself with “contempt and disgust.”

He said the only claim Holbrook denied was that he used his daughter’s genuine cancer scare as an excuse for not paying back his victims on time.

He will be sentenced on Monday morning at Bradford Crown Court.