Greedy financial advisers jailed for fraud to fund lavish lifestyle

Alan Hill, 52, and Mark Bates, 48, pocketed fees in a five-year swindle after providing their services to a range of wealthy clients, including two Sheffield Crown Court judges.

The pair splashed out on homes in France and Spain together while working for PACE Financial Management in Sheffield.

Bates's wife Karen, 40, was cleared of laundering the proceeds of their theft but was convicted of false accounting after a trial at London's Southwark Crown Court.

Instead of paying the commission owed to PACE, Hill instead took the payments and made out cheques to Mr or Mrs Bates.

In total, Hill was paid 370,000 and handed over 110,000 to Bates – taking advantage of the fact that forms at the firm were not cross-checked.

Among the clients Hill illegally profited from were two judges at Sheffield Crown Court – Roger Keen QC and Robert Moore QC -and the case was tried in London as a result.

South Yorkshire detectives started investigating Hill's activities as a result of his involvement in a mortgage transaction. Former client Helen Chapman, 48, reported her ex-husband Anthony Gould, 47, to police after they bought a 2.6m home in Spain using documents falsified by Hill.

When the homes of Hill and the Bates' were searched, investigators uncovered piles of bogus documents, including invoices concocted to cover up the swindle.

Yesterday Judge Martin Beddoe jailed the gang for a total of just under 15 years for an "industry of fraud" worth in excess of 3m.

Hill, of Darfield Avenue, Owlthorpe, Sheffield, was sentenced to five-and-a-half years for conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to obtain a money transfer and conspiracy to launder criminal property.

Judge Beddoe told the former naval serviceman: "You were in it to make money out of it, putting the financial interests of a number of institutions at risk, and indeed risking misery, because should those who you assisted in getting mortgages be unable to pay them, as occurred in one instance, they are rendered potentially homeless."

Mark Bates, of Highfield Lane, Chesterfield, was jailed for four years for the same charges as Hill and Gould, of White Holme Drive, Leeds, was also jailed for four years for conspiracy to obtain money transfer by deception, obtaining money transfers by deception, obtaining property by deception and making and using false documentation.

Turning to Bates, the judge lambasted his "barefaced lies", his betrayal of his fellow directors and his willingness to put his family's future at risk.

He said: "You became a thoroughly greedy and dishonest man."

Interior designer Helen Chapman, of Victoria Court, Nether Edge, Sheffield, received a 15-month sentence for conspiracy to obtain money transfer by deception. She had claimed to earn 400,000 a year on the mortgage application form when, in fact, she worked in a mobile phone shop in Bakewell.

The convictions followed a trial which lasted for six weeks.

Mrs Bates was given a conditional discharge after the judge ruled she had been corrupted by her "greedy" husband.

Det Con Mark Wootton, from South Yorkshire Police's money laundering team, said: "This has been a lengthy and complicated investigation.

"This investigation started as serious but rather straightforward, then we gradually revealed the full extent of Alan Hill's involvement with fraud and money laundering and saw the full extent of their organised crimes."