A former financial planner in Indiana embezzled almost $4.7m from a client and used a lot of it to fund his gambling.

Christopher Turean has pleaded guilty to single counts of wire fraud and filing a false tax return, with the former carrying a prison sentence of up to 20 years. He has to pay $4.7m in restitution to the victim and $1.7m to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for not reporting the embezzled income.

the illegal activity only commenced around July 2019

Turean began working with the unnamed client in 2015 while employed by Valeo Financial Advisors. However, the illegal activity only commenced around July 2019. He then started taking money from the victim’s investment account, claiming it was for a real estate deal.

Turean was actually paying off a home equity loan and gambling with the funds on sports betting platforms like FanDuel and DraftKings. Valeo fired him as a result of the embezzlement, with the court documents not revealing how the illegal activity came to light.