Jail term for former councillor

Iain Catto pleaded guilty at Edinburgh Sheriff Court

A former Conservative councillor who stole £70,000 from a disabled client who depended upon him as a close friend has been jailed for 27 months.

Disgraced Iain Catto, 41, offered to look after the finances of Francis Fleming, 59, after he became partially paralysed following a savage assault.

Catto, who was sacked from his job as a solicitor for gross misconduct, was regularly taking money from Mr Fleming.

Catto pleaded guilty at Edinburgh Sheriff Court to the theft.

You callously took funds from Mr Fleming to support yourself when you knew that he depended on that money and you Sheriff Kathrine Mackie

He was stealing sums of £11,000 and £9,000 at a time between December 2002 and 2004 from the criminal injuries pay-out his client had received.

He even sold some of his victim's shares to get more cash.

Sheriff Kathrine Mackie told him: "You callously took funds from Mr Fleming to support yourself when you knew that he depended on that money and you. It was a gross breach of trust."

Mr Fleming's son Frank MacLennan, 42, hit out at the sentence outside the court.

He said: "That is not long enough for what he did to my father. He should have been given at least three or four years."

Bank statements

Edinburgh Sheriff Court had heard that Catto, a member of Lothian Regional Council from 1990 to 1994, frequently asked Mr Fleming to sign blank cheques pretending to look after his finances and had bank statements sent to his home address.

Mr Fleming, who was left partially paralysed and impaired following an attempt on his life in 1968, trusted the solicitor so completely he even gave him a key to his Craigentinny Road home in Edinburgh.

Meanwhile, Catto was buying himself airline and train tickets for the UK and abroad, hotel rooms, restaurant meals, computer software, £300 worth of goods from Oddbins and expensive haircuts.

'Bled father dry'

Catto carried on with the scam until he was found out by Mr MacLennan, who moved from Inverness to Edinburgh to look after his father in July, 2004.

Mr MacLennan said outside of court: "He bled my father dry. We had been planning to move to Spain but now that idea is gone. He lied to my dad and me from the start.

"Although he has repaid the money he cashed in shares that were earning my dad an income. I discovered the stealing when I saw my dad writing blank cheques and looked into it.

"I feel very angry and my dad is devastated and hurt. He considered him to be a very close friend and depended upon him."