The offending of Steven Long and his co-defendant Raymond Simpson came to light after Long’s wealth management business group collapsed.
A fraudster who swindled £11.5 million from 115 victims in a “Ponzi scheme” targeting retired people has been jailed.
The offending of Steven Long and his co-defendant Raymond Simpson came to light after the former’s wealth management business group Universal collapsed in 2018.
Homeowners of or near retirement age were lured in by Universal’s marketing seminars, which offered to manage and protect trust funds for inheritance planning.
Universal trustee and executor Long, of Stowmarket, Suffolk, wore a suit and made no expression during his Southwark Crown Court sentencing on Friday.
Meanwhile, “respected” independent financial adviser Simpson – not a formal Universal staff member but described as “the primary mover in the deals” – was absent.
Simpson lives in Portugal and did not attend his trial or sentencing. A warrant for his arrest has been issued.
The judge said many of the victims will find it a “bitter irony” that Simpson’s Portuguese home was paid for by a house sale and his wife’s inheritance.
Jailing Long for eight years and four months, Judge Gregory Perrins said: “Your offending has taken a very heavy toll on the lives of so many and you should feel deeply ashamed.”
He said “(you) abused the trust” of particularly vulnerable people “to keep your business running and so you and your family could enjoy all the trappings of wealth”.
He added: “No sentence I impose today will feel long enough to those who have suffered so much.”
Simpson was sentenced to five and a half years and Judge Perrins said he had assisted Long by using money taken from trust accounts to “invest in a series of increasingly reckless investments”.
A total of £11,574,814 of client money was lost by Universal, for which Long, 59, is ultimately responsible and has been charged over, prosecutor Charlene Sumnall told the court.
Of that sum, Simpson, 79, has been charged with defrauding £785,380 through investments and £615,000 by buying land in Spain.
The judge said: “The whole purpose of the trusts was to protect your clients’ assets from dissipation. It would have been clear to you that not one of your clients would have ever consented to their money being used in any way that threatened that security.
“However, knowing this to be the case you then knowingly and dishonestly abused the trust that was placed in you by so many by using their money for your own ends.”
Simpson “deliberately made use of company bank accounts to misappropriate client funds” and each trust was “pooled into a single account” rather than into its own ring-fenced one.
“This was no doubt done so that it was easier to misappropriate those funds,” he added.
Judge Perrins found Long lied to clients when they inquired about their money and sent them letters saying their cash was “being held in interest-bearing accounts”.
“This was no doubt intended to offer them peace of mind – however, it was completely untrue.
“You were in fact using their money for your own ends in a number of different ways.”
The first was to pay business overheads, including staff salaries, and in doing so “was using other people’s money to keep your business afloat”, the judge said.
Universal had turned a profit up until 2013, the court heard previously, but there was a £6 million shortfall between the company’s legitimate income and its expenses during the indictment period from 2014 to 2018, the court heard.
Describing the other uses of funds, the judge said: “You knew that you were using money held in trust for others so that you and your family could enjoy a lifestyle that is out of reach for most ordinary people.”
In the UK, he put down a £300,000 deposit on a Grade-II listed house worth about £3 million.
The fraud funded luxury holidays, a timeshare property, and a purchase at a diving shop – all in Mexico, the judge said.
“They were not modest holidays” and one payment to “Mayan Resorts and Vida Vacations” was for £74,000, he added.
A total of £800,000 trust money was sent to his wife Melanie Long who also paid nearly £50,000 to Vida Vacations, “no doubt for another luxury holiday”, Judge Perrins continued.
Mrs Long also bought a Spanish villa for £170,000, Land Rover and five of her annual tax bills were paid with the cash, the court heard.
The businessman further used the cash to support his brother’s window cleaning business, sending it £950,000 between 2013 and 2018. Of that, £830,000 was lost.
David Cunningham lost all £140,000 of his late wife’s savings by allowing Long access, he said in a victim impact statement read to the court by the prosecution.
Long “sensed an easy prey” when the widower explained the issues he was having with the Co-op about managing his wife’s estate, he said.
Mr Cunningham, who was married to his wife for 42 years, said: “I feel ashamed, guilty about my incompetence, suspicious of people, unhappy, tense, saddened, nervous about making most decisions.
“I have completely failed my wife and children, which I cannot undo.”
Long “robbed” Mr Cunningham’s children “of their mother’s legacy”, the court heard, and he said: “Even now after more than 10 years, I still quite often wake up in the night… feeling like a complete failure.
“I also know that this guilt and shame … shall never end, and I hope my wife, Christine, will forgive me when we meet again.
“I had made an appointment to see my doctor and I was going to request sleeping tablets on the pretext that I couldn’t sleep, however, my daughter found out and informed the doctor of my intent.
“In hindsight, I am glad she did as it would have been a selfish act.”
There are 115 direct victims in the case but “behind each and every one” is a family and others who have suffered, the judge said.
Simpson was tried and convicted in his absence of two counts of fraud by abuse of position – one between January 1 2014 and April 23 2018 and the other between May 1 2015 and April 23 2018.
These charges were left to lie on file for Long, after he admitted two counts of fraud by abuse of position between July 31 2008 and April 23 2018, and January 1 2014 and April 23 2018.
