[1][2] After seven years as a clerk in the London bank of Marsh, Sibbald & Co., of which his father was one of the founders, he was taken into partnership, and the whole business of the firm was left in his hands.
He was tried at the Old Bailey, and, the case against him having been proved, he admitted his guilt but pleaded that he had used the misappropriated funds to pay his firm's debts.
[4] The efforts of his many friends were, however, unavailing, and he was hanged in November 1824,[3] with the execution witnessed by Samuel Warren, who later recalled it in "My First Circuit", a section of his Miscellanies.
[5] Fauntleroy was buried at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground in a family vault, though a wholly unfounded rumour was widely credited for some time subsequently, to the effect that he had escaped strangulation by inserting a silver tube in his throat and went to live comfortably abroad.
He was also condemned to death, but subsequently had his sentence commuted to transportation (probably due to the influence of John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare).