Heartbroken dad speaks out against 'ruthless' gambling industry after tragic death of Northamptonshire son in £170k debt

Kevin McNamara lost his 30-year-old son Blake last year after he was found dead in his van in Irthlingborough on December 8.

The heartbroken dad said his “whole world fell apart” when he got the call to say father-of-two Blake had been found. Blake was a well-known and much-loved figure in Rushden. His family says that Blake had taken his own life. An inquest is due to be held next month to determine the cause of death.

Paying tribute to his son, Kevin said: “He was happy, outgoing, he was the first to buy you a drink and the last person to buy you a drink. He was just so outgoing, all out for his family. Everything was great.

"He will be missed like you wouldn’t believe. There were about 160 people, all friends, who turned up to his cremation. He will massively be missed. It’s a huge hole.”

Kevin now wants to address the issue of out of control gambling after becoming privy to his son’s bank statements after he died and finding out that his son was in £170,000 worth of debt.

The dad, who served in the British Army for 20 years, said: “A week after his death we started receiving letters through the post at his house and it was all the creditors asking why he hadn’t been in touch. Nobody knew about this. I certainly didn’t. It was total shock.

“I spoke to creditors, he was £170,000 in debt. These weren’t all your back street people, there were some big banks lending him money. How he kept getting money from them is just beyond me. That’s something I’m going to tackle after the inquest next week [at The Guildhall in Northampton].

"I look at his bank statements going back four, five years you can see his wages coming in but pretty quickly they’re going back out. It was £160,000 on gambling alone, and that was in two years. One month he got a loan in and within two weeks he had spent nearly £18,000. There were 19 – 20 transactions in one bookmakers totalling up to £7,000.”

Kevin says that his son, who had an £80,000 a year salary working in telecommunications, “hid” his addiction well.

"It’s a hidden addiction. Like any addiction, all he was out to do was get his next fix. What he did for four and a half years, he hid it well, so well. He had nine bank accounts,” said Kevin.

"I can’t even look back and say, ‘did I know?’, ‘were there any signs?’, but I didn’t know what the signs were.

"I look back at his statements where I’ve paid money into his account and think, ‘Jesus, I was helping him do it’. But you just don’t know.

"I think if someone has taken drugs and alcohol the signs are there. But if you don’t know, there’s nothing you can do, and that’s unfortunately what happened with Blake, we just didn’t know.” What are your thoughts and feelings towards the gambling/financial industry?

Kevin said: “I feel angry at the system that has managed to give him so much money. I feel angry at the gambling industry, it’s so ruthless, ruthless at how it does the advertising. They don’t really care.

“I think the way the gambling industry should go down is the same way as cigarettes. It’s quite hard now to walk into a shop and see a pack of cigarettes. It’s easy to go down the street and gamble; they advertise it on the buses, every football game that takes place, on football kits. I think gambling advertising is so prevalent.

“I contacted one bank regarding the death of my son and they passed me on to their bereavement department. This must be happening a lot for them to have that department. I’m sure there are hundreds of people going through the same thing.

“Some people will say it was his choice to gamble, I would say to that, ‘it might be his choice to buy his lottery ticket, like everyone else does, but that first ticket might start you into the next one’.

“The way they advertise millionaires, it makes people think that could be them one day, and that’s how it starts. It starts at a young age, unfortunately.” What would you say to Blake now?

Kevin said: “It doesn’t matter if it was £200,000, we would have got through it. If only I had known. He was probably like me, he was a proud guy, he didn’t want people to know, and I think that’s the unfortunate thing.

“If he was here today and I knew half of it, or a snippet, I would have probably kidnapped him, brought him home, looked after him and made sure he was right and got the help he needed.” What would you say to anyone going through the same as Blake?

Kevin said: “Once it starts interfering with your family life, your job, you need to ask for help. Who do you ask? Someone close. Guys don’t like to talk, I think there’s still a stigma attached to it.

"I would urge people to maybe get more out of their mates, ask them about things, approach them and ask what’s going on.”

Kevin wanted to promote the Walk + Talk group, set up by Blake’s friend Brandon Cox, which aims to have a prolonged impact on the way that people everywhere approach their mental well-being.

The dad says he now plans on working with the charity Gambling with Lives to help prevent others from the same fate as Blake.

Gambling with Lives is a community of families bereaved by gambling-related suicide that provides support, raises awareness of gambling disorder's devastating effects and campaigns for change.