Kweku Adoboli was the author of his own downfall According to the investigating officer, DCI Perry Stokes, Adoboli committed fraud "to increase his bonus, his status, his job prospects and his ego." Starting from a relatively small base in 2008 Adoboli started to create fictitious trades, using his knowledge of the bank's back-office processes to create a "shadow" account where losses and profits could be concealed. Given the size of the $50bn trading book he was involved in running, the sums were not huge. The practice started in 2008 when, faced with a $400,000 loss, Adoboli falsified accounts to hide the deal and extend its settlement date. The trade was booked into what he described as his "umbrella account." Over the course of the next two years trades of anywhere between $5m and $20m were masked in the account. Perversely, with many of them left open, some returned to profit. According to Adoboli at one point he had made up to $20m in profit for UBS. But, as the complexity of the concealment grew, so did the potential liability. In June 2011 a hidden trade on the futures market led to Adoboli nursing significantly higher losses than previously. The court was told the total exposure for the bank at this point was in excess of $1bn. Once again Adoboli concealed the position, this time by creating a false counter-party to effectively cancel out any loss. However, instead of waiting for the trade to come good, Adoboli fell back on the martingale betting system. He doubled his trade and hoped for them to come good. "Given the size of the unhedged bets that Mr Adoboli was undertaking [and] the doubling of the sums necessary to recover, the losses he was making very rapidly reached into the billions," prosecuting counsel told the court. The risk failed. In just two months Adoboli built up a risk position that peaked at about $12bn. Amazingly, in the weeks that followed the peak, Adoboli's martingale system did almost come good. By mid-August his position had reduced to closer to $1bn. "Although I had a couple of opportunities to unwind the long trade for a negligible loss, I did not move quickly enough," Adobli said in his email. It was during this time that pressure started to be brought to bear on Adoboli both at work and at home to explain what was going on. His superiors started questioning apparent discrepancies in his trades, while his girlfriend advised him that if he didn't admit to what he had done the deception would "kill him." The full scale of the problems facing Adoboli was only revealed later in court. Poor investment decisions had cost him personally £100,000 in failed spreadbets. Cashflow problems had left him relying on payday loan companies despite pulling in £350,000 a year in 2010. The damage he did to his employer was evidenced in the 10pc slump in the bank's share price after he was arrested. The toll on own life is harder to quantify, but it starts with his seven-year prison sentence.