'Selfish' fraudster ran £20m Ponzi scheme to spend money on racehorses and his own failed business

Liam Wainwright, who had been a director of Rawdon Asset Finance Ltd, had falsified documents to mislead investors and spend their money on ventures including a racehorse syndicate and his own failed private businesses.

The 61-year-old, of Leeds, was found guilty of fraud and jailed for seven years on June 9. His crimes were investigated by the Insolvency Service, who said his investors were victims of a “classic Ponzi scheme”, whereby the returns paid to them were funded by the capital injections from later investors.

Leeds Crown Court heard Wainwright had enjoyed a lavish lifestyle as a result of his offending, and that his actions had had a devastating impact on individuals and families who had invested money into the business.

Wainwright told investors and shareholders that Rawdon Asset Finance was lending money to businesses with security on property, land or plant and equipment, but was in fact using the cash to pay returns to other creditors, buy into a racehorse syndicate and to fund other companies, including a Lincolnshire-based property development and a redevelopment company in West Yorkshire, both linked to himself.

By the time the company went into liquidation, Rawdon Asset Finance’s creditors were owed more than £20 million. Liquidators have so far recovered just £750,630.

Wainwright admitted he had began to falsify accounts from around 2017, to hide the company’s true financial position from his co-directors and investors. He also admitted he had earlier forged a mortgagor’s signature on a legal charge to mislead investors and had – between April 2010 and April 2011 – breached the terms of a previous bankruptcy by acting as a director of the company the court’s permission.

The court also heard Wainwright had lied about the company’s accounts and the destination of funds in order to elicit £100,000 from one investor only weeks before the business collapsed, in the full knowledge that investors would not get their money back.

Wainwright was disqualified from running a business for 11 years in November 2020 after investigators found he had falsified around £12 million worth of entries in the company’s loan book in the two years before the company entered administration in 2019.

After a further criminal investigation, the Insolvency Service took Wainwright to court on counts of false accounting, fraud, forgery, and acting as a director while bankrupt.

Julie Barnes, Chief Investigator for the Insolvency Service, said: "Liam Wainwright’s greed and selfish actions had a devastating effect on the people who had put their trust in him and his business. His victims included elderly and vulnerable people. Many investors lost most or all of the money they had entrusted to him, and some lost their life savings.

“His sentencing shows the Insolvency Service will seek the toughest penalties for those who break the law, to help ensure that the UK is a safe place for investors and for businesses.”