An accountant who plundered almost £600,000 from former X Factor winner James Arthur to feed his gambling addiction has been jailed for four years.
Mark Livermore, 39, repeatedly raided the singer’s earnings to pay for his spread betting, telling the star his money was being spent on legitimate “tax purposes”.
Mr Arthur, 30, had hired the qualified chartered accountant’s firm to handle his financial affairs after winning the talent show in 2012 and becoming a chart-topping success.
The fraud emerged in April last year during an audit by Livermore’s business partner, who found £599,000 had been taken from Mr Arthur’s Coutts bank account over a year.
When the partner challenged Livermore, he claimed he had agreed to place bets on the singer’s behalf.
Sentencing Livermore yesterday, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith told the father of two: “Up until this happening, you were a hard-working and successful professional, and a very good family man.
"At some point you turned to spread betting and to start with you were doing it with your own money.
“I’m told you chose to steal money from James Arthur because you had access to his day-to-day accounts, but the fact you had that access suggests a particular trust was placed in you, trust you betrayed with devastating effects.”
The judge added that the fraud had been a “disaster” for Livermore’s business partner, who had mentored him.
Prosecutor Andrew Frymann told the court the singer, whose hits include Impossible and You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You, hired Livermore as his personal accountant just after his “meteoric” rise to fame.
He added: “Mr Livermore held regular business meetings with Mr Arthur to discuss his income and expenditure, and he deployed carefully considered subterfuge in explaining to Mr Arthur sums of money would be regularly transferred from his account for tax purposes.”
Christopher Martin, representing Livermore, said: “He was introduced to spread betting five years ago, and it spiralled out of control into addiction.” Livermore, from Billericay, had pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position.
