Leeson, A Known Rogue Trader Catches The Online Gambling Bug

The rogue trader who destroyed Barings Bank, has reappeared on the Celebpoker.com gambling site, as a professional Internet poker player.  Leeson ruined Barings Bank by accumulating $1.3bn in derivatives trading losses.

Online poker has become Leeson's major, source of income, according to Celebpoker.com. Just last week alone he won on the site, $25,000 in a no-limits cash game.

Former footballer Vinnie Jones Leeson, introduced Leeson to online poker. Leeson is reported as saying that what had begun as a simple hobby soon became a profitable side-line.

In spite of the fact that Leeson wins sums like $25,000, he says that he has learned from his former serious mistakes and now says that he usually doesn't gamble big money on such sites.

He is reported as saying that there is a possible high return on money invested but Leeson says that he is very aware that the money can also be lost so he says that he will not be repeating his past mistakes.

In 1995 Leeson spent six and a half years in jail for the part that he played in the fall of Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in the United Kingdom. Leeson had been working as an investment operations officer in Singapore for Barings. It was in this context that he accumulated losses of $1.3bn by executing extremely large bets based on interest rate fluctuations. Leeson went on the run when the accounting fraud was uncovered by the Barings executives.

Barings ultimately want down and was purchased for the small sum of £1 by Dutch banking group ING. 

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