Fraudsters swindled £11.5 million from victims in scheme targeting retired people

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The offending of Steven Long and his co-defendant Raymond Simpson came to light after the former’s wealth management business group Universal collapsed in 2018.

Homeowners of or near retirement age were lured in by Universal’s marketing seminars, which offered to manage and protect trust funds for inheritance planning.

“Respected” independent financial adviser Simpson – not a formal staff member but described as “the primary mover in the deals” – did not attend his trial or Friday’s sentencing and is understood to be in Portugal.

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Universal trustee and executor Long, of Stowmarket, Suffolk, wore a suit and stared into the middle distance for the first hours of the Southwark Crown Court proceedings

The defendants, both fathers, will be sentenced later on Friday.

A total of £11,574,814 of client money was lost by Universal, for which Long, 59, is ultimately responsible and has been charged over, prosecutor Charlene Sumnall said.

Of that sum, Simpson, 79, has been charged with defrauding £785,380 through investments and £615,000 by buying land in Spain.

David Cunningham lost all £140,000 of his late wife’s savings by allowing Long access, he said in a victim impact statement read to the court by the prosecution.

Long “sensed an easy prey” when the widower explained the issues he was having with the Co-Op about managing his wife’s estate, he said.

In one of 37 victim impact statements that will go before Judge Gregory Perrins, Mr Cunningham, who was married to his wife for 42 years, said: “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.”

Long “robbed” Mr Cunningham’s children “of their mother’s legacy”, the court heard, and he said: “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.

“In hindsight, I am glad she did as it would have been a selfish act.”

Ms Sumnall said the overall case “was fundamentally a case about greed. Mr Long and Mr Simpson sought to enrich themselves using money that was not theirs.

“In doing so they had no regard to how the people to whom the assets that they were helping themselves to would be impacted.”

There are 115 “direct victims” in this case, the prosecutor said, 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.”

She added: “The fact that these were individuals who were older, near or at retirement age, means the Crown say that they were particularly vulnerable.

“Put crudely they do not have enough time left to earn back that which has been defrauded from them.”

The victims are “overwhelmingly not wealthy people” and are “careful, responsible people who had worked tirelessly hard over years to build up, often modest but extremely significant, capital (or) assets.”

Yet 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.”

A holiday to Mexico for Long and his then-wife Melanie Long was paid for with the money, as well as a timeshare property in the same country, the court heard.

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.

However 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.

Bank accounts under Simpson’s control were also used to channel investment funds, and he knowingly promoted the phoney schemes, Ms Sumnall said.

The prosecutor told the court: “There is an element of playing a leading role in a group activity.

“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 type 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.