John Terry's Home Loans Invite Gambling Questions

A report in The Sun today reveals that Chelsea captain John Terry—who makes £170,000 a week playing soccer in England's Premier League—remortgaged his mansion for a fourth time last summer. Despite buying the house in Surrey for £2.25 million in 2003, Terry's latest remortgage on the property was for £4.65 million ($7.13 million), records show. A Sun source describes this as "very unusual behavior for someone earning significantly more than half a million pounds a month." Speculation on why he needed these extra loans will focus on Terry's gambling habits; he reportedly quit gambling last February, after staking huge sums on horse and dog racing, soccer games and trips to Las Vegas. The central defender has long endured public scandal over aspects of his private life and is presently embroiled in a case of alleged racial abuse. There are other doubts about his judgement: when he tried, unsuccessfully, to sell his mansion for £6.5 million in 2010, a "friend" of his is quoted as saying that potential buyers "raised questions over taste," because the star had replaced his front lawn with astroturf.