Leeds finance boss jailed for £20m fraud

Leeds-based finance agency boss Francis Wainwright has been sentenced to seven years in jail after admitting operating a £20m Ponzi scheme which cheated aged and weak buyers.

The 61-year-old falsified paperwork to mislead buyers, spending their cash on ventures together with a racehorse syndicate and his personal failed non-public companies.

Traders who had been persuaded to spend money on the enterprise had been victims of a basic Ponzi scheme, whereby the returns paid to them had been funded by the capital injections from later buyers, Leeds Crown Courtroom heard. 

The courtroom heard that Mr Wainwright had lied in regards to the firm’s accounts and the vacation spot of funds to be able to elicit £100,000 from one investor solely weeks earlier than the enterprise collapsed, within the full information that the investor wouldn’t get their a refund.

The investigation and prosecution was led by the federal government’s Insolvency Service.

Mr Wainwright had been a director of Rawdon Asset Finance Ltd, an organization included in 2009 which supplied finance to small and medium companies unable to safe funding. He inspired smaller buyers to place cash into his enterprise to fund its providers.

He was disqualified for 11 years in November 2020 after the Insolvency Service discovered he had falsified round £12m value of entries within the firm’s mortgage e-book within the two years earlier than the corporate entered administration in 2019.

After an additional felony investigation, the Insolvency Service introduced the director to courtroom on counts of false accounting, fraud, forgery, and performing as a director whereas bankrupt.

Julie Barnes, chief investigator for the Insolvency Service, mentioned: “Liam Wainwright’s greed and egocentric actions had a devastating impact on the individuals who had put their belief in him and his enterprise. His victims included aged and weak individuals. Many buyers misplaced most or all the cash they’d entrusted to him, and a few misplaced their life financial savings.”

The courtroom heard that Mr Wainwright had loved a lavish life-style because of his offending, and that his actions had had a devastating impression on people and households who had invested cash into the enterprise.

Mr Wainwright advised buyers and shareholders that Rawdon Asset Finance was lending cash to companies with safety on property, land or plant and tools, nevertheless it was the truth is utilizing the money to pay returns to different collectors, purchase right into a racehorse syndicate and to fund different corporations, together with a Lincolnshire-based property growth and a redevelopment firm in West Yorkshire, each linked to himself.

By the point the corporate went into liquidation, Rawdon Asset Finance’s collectors had been owed greater than £20m. Liquidators have to this point recovered £750,630.

Mr Wainwright admitted that he started to falsify accounts from round 2017, to cover the corporate’s true monetary place from his co-directors and buyers. He additionally admitted he had earlier solid a mortgagor’s signature on a authorized cost to mislead buyers and had – between April 2010 and April 2011 – breached the phrases of a earlier chapter by performing as a director of the corporate with out the courtroom’s permission.

Mr Wainwright pleaded responsible on 20 February at Kirklees Magistrates’ Courtroom, and was sentenced at Leeds Crown Courtroom by Choose Bayliss on 9 June.

The Choose handed concurrent sentences for all costs, aside from the sentence for fraud towards the ultimate investor, which was added consecutively to replicate an escalation in Mr Wainwright’s culpability.

The next sentences had been imposed, with reductions reflecting a credit score for the plea:

False accounting – 6 years 6 months, lowered to 4 years 4 months.

Forgery – 2 years after trial, lowered to 16 months, concurrent.

Breach of Director Disqualification – 12 months after trial, lowered to eight months, concurrent.

Failing to Give up offence beneath Bail Act – 28 days, concurrent.

Fraud – 4 years after trial, lowered to 2 years 8 months, consecutive.

Mr Wainwright stays disqualified as a director.