24-05-2025
Education boss who sent e-mails joking about cocaine and strippers is cleared of wrongdoing after explaining he was pretending to be Wolf of Wall Street character
An education boss who sent emails joking about cocaine and strippers has been cleared of any wrongdoing after saying he was pretending to be Wolf of Wall Street character.
Tom Crombie, 40, of Edinburgh, Scotland, appeared at the High Court in London this week after being accused of 'fraudulent misrepresentation' and gross misconduct relating to his email exchanges with a senior executive.
Former schoolteacher Crombie had negotiated to sell a stake of his company My Online Schooling for £9million to Inspired Education Group, which boasts more than 90,000 students in 119 schools across 27 countries.
However, Inspired claimed 10 email exchanges between Crombie and the executive evidenced drug and alcohol use and were 'highly offensive, obscene, vulgar, racist, sexist and discriminatory'.
They said the true value of the stake should be at least halved because of this, meaning Crombie would lose at least £4.5million.
But the 40-year-old's defence that his emails - which made apparent reference to cocaine - were 'banter' have been upheld by a judge.
One of Crombie's emails read: 'Who nose how busy London will be this week. Will be good to see Charlie, the new king if he's in town.
'Weather looking cooler next week and possible snow. Looking like that fine powder type. Think there are tourists coming from as far afield as Columbia which will be great to see.'
Crombie, who first taught in Scotland and New Zealand before founding his online school in 2016, said the plot of The Wolf of Wall Street was 'two guys running a business get into the world of drugs and other related trouble'.
In another email, Crombie wrote: 'Arrive in London… C & S [cocaine and strippers] till we leave (in body bags).'
Mrs Justice Joanna Smith said the exchanges were 'a minuscule proportion' of the messages between the pair over two years and that they did not warrant claims of gross misconduct.
She said: 'Looked at dispassionately, the emails evidence the occasional unprofessional and inappropriate use of work emails as a means of letting off steam.
'The mere fact of sending an inappropriate or unprofessional message from a company email address does not itself constitute gross misconduct.
'They had not been acting improperly on school business. On the contrary their conduct towards everyone outside their tight-knit friendship was at all times entirely professional.
'The alcohol and cocaine emails do not evidence actual overconsumption of alcohol or the possession of, or use of, illegal drugs, but rather a somewhat immature and naive "letting off steam" by two close friends with a dark and ironic sense of humour who were working all hours to make the business a success.'
Crombie said the emails were 'an ironic comparison' to the movie Wolf of Wall Street, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort and Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff.
Judge Smith said the emails showed the kind of 'light-hearted banterous, and sometimes ludicrous, exchanges of the type that occur between friends'.
She added the men shared a 'long-running joke to contrast their lives with the 'alpha male' conduct of the film's protagonists.
The judge dismissed a further claim that the men's reference to 'tidies' was a 'disrespectful, demeaning and sexist term for a woman' and accepted it was 'a term used in Scotland for a good-looking, attractive, woman'.
Smith also accepted that the men were unaware that the hit song Roxanne, performed by The Police, was about a prostitute after the pair had referred to 'red light' during an exchange about a senior colleague named Roxanne.
