Mark Langford, who was killed in a car crash on Monday at 42, built his fortune on accidents, creating a business empire worth millions — albeit one seemingly built on sand — and the catchy slogan “Where there’s blame, there’s a claim.”

His company’s high-pressure sales operation was widely condemned as “ambulance chasing.”

When in 2003 his firm, The Accident Group (TAG), collapsed with debts approaching $200 million, Langford fired 2,500 staff members via text message. In what became known as a notorious act of corporate crassness, staff were told, via mobile phone: “Urgent. Unfortunately salaries not paid. Please do not contact office. Full details to follow later today.”

Although Langford’s company crashed with ignominy, it had earlier not been without its redeeming moments. TAG had won six-figure claims for some of its clients, victims of auto and industrial accidents, had donated $10 million to a child-abuse charity, and treated its staff to a private performance by the all-girl band Atomic Kitten.

On the other hand, it had charged usurious commission on policies it sold to its customers, while its door-to-door salesmen, who hung around hospital casualty wards, were vilified by one client as “harder to get rid of than a sexually transmitted disease.”

While thousands were left without a penny following TAG’s collapse, Langford and his wife, a fellow director of the firm, were not. As staff began ransacking the company’s offices in Manchester, the couple headed for the Spanish sun.

Already the owner of a 24-acre estate in Cheshire, Langford forged a new life befitting a multimillionaire among the shops and exclusive golf clubs of Marbella. He rented a five-bedroom villa with a sweeping drive on the resort’s Zagaleta estate and enrolled his daughters at the $20,000-a-year King’s School there.

But back in Britain Langford had been fighting off a tightening noose of legal challenges and court hearings brought by tax authorities. He was coming under increasing pressure to explain how the company folded just months after he had helped himself to millions in dividends. In early 2006 liquidators froze Langford’s assets, including a £1.4 million yacht where tax inspectors cited him as he lay moored in a Spanish harbor.

Initially trained as a solicitor in a law firm, Langford at 27 started Motorlaw before launching The Accident Group in 1999.

In November 1998 Langford was involved in another car crash in which a pensioner was killed. The man was hurled 15 feet into the air by Langford’s red Ferrari 355 F1 Spyder. Langford was convicted only of careless driving, despite having previously lost his license for drunk driving.

Langford’s death in a second crash — this time at the wheel of a humble Opel Corsa — will not terminate the taxman’s inquiries into his affairs.

In October 2006 Langford did not attend a bankruptcy hearing at the High Court in London, his solicitor telling the court his client was suffering from depression and too unwell to face the hearing.