A solicitor who stole £1.25 million from a client left paralysed by a traffic accident was jailed yesterday for ten years for what the judge described as the “very worst breach of trust for a professional man”.

Thomas McGoldrick’s law firm was sinking into debt, but he lavished much of the stolen money on his “obscenely extravagant” lifestyle among the Cheshire set.

The cash was part of £1.8 million in compensation, which was intended to fund a lifetime of care for Keith Anderson, 45, who is immobilised below the neck and needs full-time care.

Instead, McGoldrick, 59, diverted the money from his firm’s client account, to maintain a front as a successful lawyer, living in a substantial home in Mobberley, Cheshire, and taking expensive holidays with his younger wife and two children.

Judge Roger Thomas, QC, sitting at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, told McGoldrick, who was wearing an old fleece in the dock, that the solicitor was happy to be photographed on holiday in Majorca and Portugal at a time when he had left his client with nothing on which to live.

McGoldrick, looking badly shaken by the length of the sentence, was found guilty in February, after a six-week trial, of false accounting, money laundering and fraud.

The solicitor had built up a large firm in Cheshire. He played golf alongside millionaires at the upmarket Mere Country Club, drove a Mercedes and Jaguar with personalised number plates and sent his children to expensive prep schools.

Even the birds in his garden lived well. The prosecution identified £50 to £80 spent each month on birdseed. David Friesner, for the prosecution, described it as a ridiculous amount for a man who was insolvent at the time.

McGoldrick owed money to an Austrian investor whom he had met on holiday. The solicitor required large amounts to keep his firm afloat at the time he took over Mr Anderson’s account.

Instead of investing the compensation on his client’s behalf, McGoldrick took it out in a number of large tranches, covering his tracks with “dummy” bills. When the Law Society became suspicious subsequently, McGoldrick offered a letter purporting to show that Mr Anderson had given him £900,000 as a gift.

With the authorities moving in, McGoldrick fled to the United States, where he embarked on a bizarre journey down the East Coast and up the Western Seaboard, increasing his credit card bill as he went.

In December 2004 Mr Anderson was looking forward to Christmas and a financially secure future. He had invited his family to visit from Jamaica and was planning to give his young son a bicycle as a present.

Officers from Greater Manchester Police had to explain to him that he had little more than £200 in his account to pay his debts. The news left him, in his own description, “wrecked and devastated”.

Mr Anderson, who was in court to see his solicitor jailed, said: “When the officer told me I had no money in my account my whole world just stopped. I had to tell my family not to come and tell my son he could not have the bicycle I had promised him.

“It did not make any sense to me. I had been brought up to believe a solicitor is someone you could trust. I felt helpless and feeling that no one could be trusted. Even now I panic when asked by my solicitor to sign documents.

“It is still like yesterday to me. I needed to know why Mr McGoldrick did that to me so I could get some closure on the matter. I have still not had that Christmas with the family.”

The Law Society made an interim award of £100,000 to Mr Anderson in July 2005, when he was unable to pay his debts or his continuing medical bills. It later reimbursed the full amount from its compensation fund.

McGoldrick’s barrister acknowledged that the solicitor stood before the court as a man at “rock bottom”, with his career in ruins. He had lost his firm, was a bankrupt who could never practise law again, and had brought shame and dishonour to himself and his family. Meanwhile, his home has been sold for £710,000.

Judge Thomas said that McGoldrick had tried to impugn the integrity and honesty of prosecution witnesses, including Mr Anderson.

Mr Anderson said after the sentence was passed that he had met McGoldrick once. “He seemed to be a nice man,” he said. “He came to the house and sat with us and drank a cup of tea. I did not have any reason to doubt him until that day when the police came and told me what had happened. It was his law firm, he was the head of it, so I thought he was the best one in the company to trust.”

Times Recommends

• Sarah Brown says 'no thanks' to veal at G8 - twice
• Stockton-on-Tees is obesity capital of Britain
• Stores blame poor sales on Murray factor