Southport financial adviser jailed for 8 years after stealing £4.5m from friends and clients

A Merseyside financial advisor's been jailed for 8 years after conning people out of more than £4m and spending it on holidays, escorts and gambling.

Neil Bartlett from Ainsdale posed as a legitimate businessman - telling friends and even his own family he was investing their cash into a high interest savings account.

In reality, he'd conned them out of their life savings - and spent it all on himself

Earlier this year Merseyside Police received a number of reports from Action Fraud (the National Fraud & Cyber Crime Reporting Centre) about Bartlett’s business practices and a fraud investigation commenced.

The fraud involved ‘investing’ people’s money, pensions and often life savings into what they thought was a safe investment account with interest. It emerged that Bartlett had created a sole trader account with the same name as the company he worked for and paid himself the money.

It is believed the fraud started in approximately 2013 and continued for five years. In total there were 24 victims.

Earlier this year he took over £740,000from friends he had known since pre-school, together with his friend’s parents and his own family. He also took advantage of being the Power of Attorney for a vulnerable elderly victim and defrauded her.

He left the UK this year for Russia, where he was living the high life in top hotels, foreign travel and gambling on the stock market.

He was arrested after flying back into Manchester Airport on Tuesday 27th November.

He has pleaded guilty to 14 counts of fraud and has asked for 14 further fraud offences to be taken into consideration.

Detective Sergeant Christopher Hawitt said: "We welcome the sentencing of Neil Bartlett and hope that he will now spend the considerable future thinking about the consequences of his actions.

"It is never nice for anyone to fall victim to fraud but this was a particularly unpleasant case for Bartlett’s victims as some of them had known him for over 50 years and so trusted him with, in some cases, their life savings."

"Bartlett thought of nobody but himself and furnishing his excessive lifestyle with the money he took from those who trusted him most."

"They are now forced to pick up the pieces of their lives but many have been left without the financial nest egg which was rightfully theirs and which they worked for many years to earn. Infact some of his victims, who have worked all their lives, are faced with the prospect of having to return to work."

"I would like to reassure the public that reports of any kind of fraud are taken extremely seriously and will be thoroughly investigated."