A 59-year-old solicitor who stole more than £1m from a personal injury client who had been paralysed in a car crash has been found guilty of a string of offences today, Friday 22 February.

Thomas McGoldrick,59,of Faulkners Lane, Mobberley, Cheshire, lived the high life while his client, 45-year-old Keith Anderson, was left without enough money to buy his son a Christmas present.

McGoldrick,who practised in Altrincham,was convicted at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court of 53 charges of false accounting and one of forgery, three counts of money laundering and two counts of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception.

On 27 November 1996, Mr Anderson had been travelling to his home in Croydon. As he drove his employer's van over the brow of a hill on the A23, he hit a pool of water, causing the van to overturn.

Mr Anderson suffered a broken vertebra, which has left him paralysed from the chest down.

He was hospitalised for 18 months and eventually instructed McGoldrick's Solicitors to represent him in a claim for damages.

Mr Anderson was subsequently awarded £1.8m compensation.

McGoldrick persuaded Mr Anderson not to invest his money. McGoldrick told him to leave the money in his practice client account until he could find property for him to invest in.

Over the course of the next two years, McGoldrick stole more than £1.1m of the victim's settlement.

The money, which was supposed to help pay for Mr Anderson's care, was used by McGoldrick to fund his struggling business and his lifestyle, which included sending his children to private school, foreign holidays, luxury cars and he has a house valued in the region of £750,000 in Cheshire.

McGoldrick's offending came to light because his legal practice was subject to audits by the Law Society.

Large transfers of money from a client account to the office account made McGoldrick's accountants suspicious.

They asked to see Keith Anderson's file, in which they found a letter purporting to be from him to McGoldrick, in which he appeared to have given his solicitor £900,000 as a gift. It was a letter forged by McGoldrick.

In December 2004, officers from Greater Manchester Police visited Mr Anderson and explained to him, a few weeks before Christmas, that he only had just over £200 left in his account.

Mr Anderson was forced to cancel buying his little boy a bicycle.

In addition to stealing Mr Anderson's money, McGoldrick made fraudulent applications for loans for his legal practice.

McGoldrick was remanded in custody to await sentence on 7 April 2008.

Detective Constable Mike Field, of Greater Manchester Police's Economic Crime Section, said: "McGoldrick is a completely shameless individual. He purported to be a respectable and professional solicitor, but all the while was stealing from one his most vulnerable clients.

"The victim in this case put his trust in him and he abused that position of trust to the extreme. McGoldrick contrived an opportunity to take a substantial quantity of money from a man who was vulnerable in order to maintain his lifestyle.

"The money awarded to the victim was not intended to allow him to live a life of luxury, but was cover the costs of expensive medical treatment and equipment that he required for day-to-day life after being paralysed.

"McGoldrick, by contrast, was motivated by greed. His actions were selfish and calculating. He was responsible for making a difficult time for the victim even worse."