Scottish Politician Blew Embezzled Cash on GTA 5 and Four 3D

Four Nintendo 3DS consoles in five days. That's the detail I can't get past. Not the Jaguar SUV, not the luxury watches, not even the motorhome. Former Scottish Nationalist Party chief executive Peter Murrell, who pleaded guilty to embezzling over $500,000 from his own party between August 2010 and October 2022, apparently needed four separate 3DS handhelds within a single working week. I have questions, and none of them are about fiscal policy.

As reported by the BBC, Murrell's 12-year spending spree included luxury items, jewellery, two cars, and multiple coffee machines. But buried in the breakdown is roughly $2,500 worth of gaming hardware, software, and accessories. That figure is modest compared to the half-million total, but the specifics paint a picture of a man who was, by all accounts, a pretty normal gamer with extremely abnormal access to other people's money.

His console purchases span PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo hardware. An Xbox One, a Nintendo Switch, and enough PlayStation gear to pick up GTA 5 on PS4. Murrell showed no brand loyalty whatsoever, which is honestly the most diplomatic thing a Scottish politician has ever done.

The Game Library

The software list reads like a mid-2010s Greatest Hits shelf. FIFA 12, 13, 14, and 15 all made the cut, though the series apparently lost him after that. Maybe he had a rough year in Ultimate Team. Battlefield 4 for Xbox 360, The Sims 3 Pets, Pac-Man, and Galaga round out a collection that feels less like a curated library and more like someone browsing a shop and grabbing whatever caught their eye. Which, given that it wasn't his money, tracks.

Then there's GTA 5. Rockstar North is based in Edinburgh, so you could argue Murrell was supporting local industry. I'd love to make that joke with a straight face, but a man who embezzled half a million dollars buying a game about elaborate heists is the sort of irony that writes itself. He also picked up a Turtle Beach headset and an iPad Pro with an Apple Magic Keyboard, rounding out a setup that wouldn't look out of place in any casual gamer's home.

What strikes me about the gaming portion of this story isn't the amount. $2,500 over twelve years is modest by enthusiast standards. Plenty of people reading this have spent more on a single Steam sale binge. It's the mundanity of it. This wasn't some extravagant, Wolf-of-Wall-Street spending spree on gold-plated controllers and custom rigs. It was FIFA, a Turtle Beach headset, and a Switch. Murrell stole a fortune and used a sliver of it to be the most average gamer alive.

The four 3DS consoles remain the outlier. Were they gifts? Did he break three of them? Was he running some kind of StreetPass operation across Edinburgh? Nobody has explained this, and I want to know more than I want to know about the Jaguar.

absent from the haul is anything current-gen. No PS5, no Series X, no PC components. Murrell's embezzlement ran through October 2022, well after both new consoles launched. Either he lost interest, got nervous about the paper trail, or was holding out for something bigger. Given that GTA 6 is on the horizon, maybe he was just waiting for the right moment to upgrade.

Murrell is set to be sentenced on June 23. The gaming purchases will be a footnote in a case involving luxury cars and hundreds of thousands in misappropriated funds, but they're the part of this story that actually feels human. Everyone else stole money and bought yachts. This guy bought FIFA and four 3DS handhelds. I'm not saying that makes it better. I'm saying it makes it funnier.