There were more than 100 victims of the cruel scheme (Image: Getty)
Fraudsters swindled £11.5 million from 115 victims in a “Ponzi scheme” targeting retired people, a court has heard. The crimes of Steven Long and his co-defendant, Raymond Simpson, came to light after Long’s wealth management business group, Universal, collapsed in 2018.
Marketing schemes targeted homeowners of or near retirement age, offering to manage and protect trust funds for inheritance planning. Simpson is understood to be in Portugal and did not attend his trial or Friday’s sentencing. Although not employed by Universal, he was described as “the primary mover in the deals”. Long, of Stowmarket, Suffolk, did appear at the Southwark Crown Court proceedings. Both will be sentenced later on Friday. Long, 59, is ultimately responsible for the £11,574,814 of client money lost by Universal, Charlene Sumnall said.
Of the sum, Simpson, 79, has been charged with defrauding £785,380 through investments and £615,000 by buying land in Spain.
In a victim impact statement read to the court by the prosecution, David Cunningham said he lost all £140,000 of his late wife’s savings by allowing Long access.
He said that Long “sensed an easy prey” when the widower explained the issues he was having with the Co-Op about managing his wife’s estate. In the statement, which is one of 37 that will go before Judge Gregory Perrins, Mr Cunningham added: “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.”
The court heard that Long “robbed” Mr Cunningham’s children “of their mother’s legacy”. Mr Cunnungham added: “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,” he continued. “In hindsight, I am glad she did, as it would have been a selfish act.”
“Mr Long and Mr Simpson sought to enrich themselves using money that was not theirs,” said Ms Sumnall. “In doing so, they had no regard for how the people to whom the assets that they were helping themselves to would be impacted.”
The prosecutor said that there are 115 “direct victims” in this case, but “given that this money represented the inheritance – actual or potential – of some clients and that money is now gone, there are a vast number of indirect victims.”
“The fact that these were individuals who were older, near or at retirement age, means the Crown say that they were particularly vulnerable,” she added. “Put crudely, they do not have enough time left to earn back that which has been defrauded from them.”
The victims of the crime are described as “overwhelmingly not wealthy people” who are “careful, responsible people who had worked tirelessly hard over years to build up, often modest but extremely significant, capital (or) assets.”
Long “lived and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle,” Ms Sumnall said. “(He) lived in a series of expensive rental properties while running the Universal group. He boasted about one of the properties he rented having belonged to a Premiership footballer.”
Victims were scammed out of millions of pounds (Image: Getty)
Long had paid for a holiday to Mexico with his then-wife with the money. He also paid for a timeshare property in the same country, the court heard.
Meanwhile, Mrs Long bought a Land Rover and five of her annual tax bills were paid with the fraudulent funds. Long used “buffer” bank accounts to disguise the origins of the funds to Mrs Long, by transferring money into them for a short period of time.
The money to Simpson was not disguised, the prosecutor said. He made “clearly inappropriate” investments with clients’ money to make personal financial gain, she said. Additionally, she said that bank accounts under Simpson’s control were used to channel investment funds, and he knowingly promoted the phoney schemes.
“There is an element of playing a leading role in a group activity,” she said. “In many of the bank trades, the evidence is supportive of Mr Simpson being the primary mover in the deals. The contacts were all his; he specialised in these types of ‘Loch Ness monster’ schemes.”
The court heard Universal had turned a profit until 2013. Simpson was tried and convicted in his absence of two counts of fraud, 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 between July 31 2008 and April 23 2018, and January 1 2014 and April 23 2018.