Keith Gough and his former wife, Louise

A fraudster has been jailed after fleecing the alcoholic former husband of a Shropshire lottery winner out of more than half a million pounds by keeping him “holed up and boozed up”.

Keith Gough, 58, from Bridgnorth, had been given £1.5 million by his wife after she won £9 million on the lottery in 2005 – but had become a hopeless alcoholic by the time of the fraud, Chester Crown Court heard.

James Prince kept Mr Gough “holed up and boozed up” for six nights at a hotel for the purposes of extracting as much money as possible.

Prince moved Mr Gough around to rented accommodation and hotels in the following months and he ended up in a cottage in a village near Chester, where friends reported Mr Gough had to ask Prince for money when he wanted to go out.

Mr Gough’s nightmare at the hands of Prince only ended when he was “kidnapped” back into his family by his nephew, the court heard.

Yesterday, Prince, 35, of Tushingham, Cheshire, was jailed for three years and four months after he admitted two counts of fraud and one of money laundering. The amount he took from Mr Gough was £700,000.

He had a previous conviction for fraud and was the subject of a suspended sentence at the time of his crimes and received a six-month jail sentence, to run consecutively, for breaching his suspended sentence.

Mr Peter Moss, prosecuting, said Prince, an undischarged bankrupt, was “plausible and articulate”.

He said Prince persuaded Mr Gough he was fit enough to be discharged from The Priory Hospital in Birmingham, where doctors had sent him after he suffered an epileptic seizure in Telford, and he took him to the Broxton Hall Hotel, near Chester.

“The manager there recalls he was drunk most of the time, topping up from day to day,” said Mr Moss. “He noticed he was also morose and vulnerable.”

Mr Gough was persuaded to write out cheques, believing them to be for business ventures.

Neil Frynan, for Prince, said he had committed the offences because he was being preyed on by gangsters.

By Deborah Collins