[xoxoxoBruce]

In the English village of Witley, Surrey, lies the remains of Witley Park. In 1890 Whitaker Wright combined the Lea Park and South Park, to create the 1400 acre playground. Of course it had the mansions and stables and all the bells and whistles of the wealthy in the Victorian age.



The crown of the extravagant playground was down the stairs, and out through a tunnel, to the ballroom with a glass windowed dome... at the bottom of one of the four man made lakes.



How did Wright acquire that much wealth? The old fashioned way, he stole it.
You can read the whole story at the Mail Online, keeping in mind the Mail is kind of a sensationalist paper.
But I want to quote a few lines...

He left school at 15 to become a printer and, briefly, a minister, before heading to America in 1867 to make his fortune. Within a few years, he had made, and lost, that fortune several times over, investing in silver mines in Colorado and New Mexico. But however much money he made for himself, it was striking that shareholders never made a penny.
~snip~
Once he’d exhausted his prospects out west, he headed to Philadelphia, becoming chairman of the Philadelphia Mining Exchange and a member of the New York Stock Exchange. A decade later, his luck ran out again when his Gunnison Iron & Coal Company collapsed, leaving him near-ruined.
~snip~
Returning to England in 1889, he started afresh, promoting himself as an expert in speculative mining ventures. Slick persuasion soon turned to outright fraud. In 1896, he raised £250,000,(£21.5  million, US$33.6 million, today), from trusting investors to back his company, Lake View Consols, set up to dig mines in Western Australia. However, by 1897, Wright’s business was mired in crooked practices.
~snip~
He set up another company, the London & Globe Finance Corporation, and, to lure aristocratic investors, installed the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, a distinguished former Viceroy of India, as chairman. Initially, the company flourished as Wright bought the Ivanhoe goldmine in Western Australia and floated it on the London stock market for £1 million (£84  million, US$131.4 million, today).
~snip~
But behind the scenes, Wright was up to all kinds of no good, artificially manipulating the share price and shovelling debts from company to company. Like Madoff after him, Wright had to face the music in the end. First, he failed to hide a disastrous £600,000 loss (£48  million, US$75 million, today) in the new Baker Street and Waterloo Railway; then his mining investments collapsed as a rich seam of ore was finally exhausted.
~snip~
In 1903, four days before a warrant for his arrest was issued, Wright fled to New York, crossing the Atlantic under a false name. After an extradition battle, he was brought back to England and tried in 1904. At his trial in the Royal Courts of Justice, it emerged that he’d blown £5  million (£400  million, US$626.6 million, today) of investors’ money, and run up another £3 million,(£240 million, US$375 million, today), in debt.

That was only the money they could prove after he got sloppy at covering his tracks. Remember there was no middle class, only rich and poor, so all that money came from rich and often powerful people. He hurt them all and totally destroyed a few including two members of parliament. So when he went to trial he had pissed off a lot of influential folks, and I'd expect they would do a William Wallace punishment(hung, drawn, quartered, then head and four limbs displayed in 5 cities), on him.

The court said guilty so he swallowed a cyanide capsule, because he'd been sentenced to...
ya ready?... "seven years’ penal servitude".

Now a hundred years later we've come full circle, where the rich and powerful can rape and pillage with virtual impunity.