A divorcee who says she was "swept off her feet" by her "lying" husband who "stole" three quarters of a million pounds from their friends and relatives, is begging top judges to save her from financial ruin.
Faye Gale, 37, who had never used the accounts herself, was previously cleared of any dishonesty and described as a “complete innocent” regarding what her husband was up to.
David Gale used bank and Betfair accounts in her name to run a “Ponzi” scheme.
But a court found she was personally liable for making a “restitution" to a friend who had invested £350,000 with him - a ruling against which Mrs Gale is now appealing.
The mother-of-two told how she was “swept off her feet” by Mr Gale, a financial advisor 13 years her senior who had "appeared rich, successful and extravagant" when they met at Royal Ascot in 2004.
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21 Nov 2013But their seven-year marriage came to an abrupt end in 2011 when she realised Mr Gale was a "liar and a fraudster" who had squandered a £700,000 investment pot entrusted to him by their nearest and dearest on "disastrous" online football bets, the Court of Appeal heard.
The former mortgage broker left the family home in Great Bookham, Surrey, "almost immediately" after revealing what he had been doing, Mrs Gale said.
She later divorced him, but was left with debts to Kathleen O’Neil, a London-based television producer who was friends with the family.
Mrs Gale said her ex-husband's explanations of his fail-safe betting system was "all Greek" to her and she was completely taken in, just like investors who were lulled into a false sense of security by the "dividends" they regularly received.
She had never used the Betfair gambling site herself and her husband had never even told her the password, the court heard.
He had complete access to her finances, opening bank accounts in her name to which she never had access.
Describing her as a "palpably honest" witness, Judge David Donaldson QC said in March that both she and Mrs O'Neil had "suffered grievously" at Mr Gale's hands and it was a tragedy one of them had to lose the case.
Challenging the judge’s ruling that Mrs Gale must make "restitution" to Mrs O'Neil for most of her losses, Richard Devereux-Cooke QC, for Mrs Gale, said her ex-husband's scheming had torn apart her family and she was as much a victim of his dishonesty as those who trusted him with their money.
He told the Court of Appeal: "Mr Gale was never running a collective investment scheme at all - he was simply misusing or stealing the money.
“It is accepted that the wife had no real knowledge of what her former husband was doing.
"Mr David Gale, it was commonly agreed, was a fraudster who had used bank accounts and a betting account set up in his wife's name.
"She thought it was risk free, as did her father who lost £145,000. The wife was taken in. Her father was taken in, as were other members for the family."
The court heard Mr Gale, a former mortgage broker, had been banned from carrying on regulated investment activities by the Financial Services Authority in October 2005.
Despite the ban he had, for about three years, solicited "investments" on a large scale from in-laws, relations, friends and neighbours, telling all of them that his system was risk free.
His wife's grandfather was amongst his earliest investors.
The Court of Appeal judges reserved their decision on Mrs Gale's appeal until an unspecified later date.
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