A Liskeard businessman has been jailed for three years after stealing £273,000 from two air ambulance charities. Leigh Windsor admitted stealing £210,000 from the Wales Air Ambulance Trust and £63,000 from Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance Trust. The 46-year-old took the money between September 2002 and July 2004 when his company Leigh Windsor Promotions ran fundraising lotteries for nine air ambulance trusts across the country. The court heard money raised by street canvassers had gone into company expenses instead of being passed on to the good causes. Robert Edwards, a manager for Windsor's firm, was given a suspended sentence. Edwards, 57, of Chapeldown Road, Torpoint, had admitted one charge of false accounting. He was given a one-year sentence suspended for two years and ordered to pay £1,000 in costs. At Plymouth Crown Court Windsor was sentenced to three years for both offences to run concurrently. Judge Francis Gilbert QC said: 'You raised a large amount of money for air ambulances, but this simply makes your conduct more reprehensible. Greed

'It was clearly the product of greed.' Windsor ran a company that hosted fundraising lotteries for nine ambulance trusts throughout the country. He was said to have used some of the cash to fund a lavish lifestyle that included several luxury properties in America and top-of-the-range cars including a Hummer and a Mercedes. Police raided his home in Quethiock, in July 2004 and found £70,000 cash and a large quantity of US dollars. Plymouth Crown Court heard Windsor invented fictitious 'winners' in his company's lotteries and claimed the prizes for himself. Father-of-four Windsor also asked for two further counts of fraud to be taken into consideration. Sentencing Windsor to three years in prison and ordering him to pay £3,000 costs, Judge Francis Gilbert said: 'These are very serious offences involving a breach of trust placed in you by charities.' Both of the ambulance trusts are expected to be fully recompensed from Windsor's own funds at a later confiscation hearing.