Wass, 47, stole over £500,000 from clients

A BOGUS Wirral financial advisor who stole more than £.5 million pounds of clients' money has been jailed for seven years.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that after being dismissed as sub-manager of Lloyds Bank in Altrincham, Ian Wass set himself up as an accountant and deceived people into thinking he was authorised to run an investment business from The Rake, Bromborough.

His 33 victims included a solicitor now suffering from multiple sclerosis, dockers, and two former Shell workers, who lost a total of almost £270,000 between them.

It is not known where their money has gone.

Mr Neville Biddle, prosecuting, said that Wass had: "Destroyed the lives of many hard working people as a result of his activities."

Wass, who became a well-known local figure, had been trusted by a large number of people looking to invest lump sums to provide a pension in old age, he said.

But he never was a qualified accountant and never had a licence to deal in an investment business, said Mr Biddle.

Wass was given £4,000 by a business partner for a VAT bill, but it ended up in the defendant's pocket, he said.

The thefts spanned seven years before Wass disappeared in October 1996 and he later surrended himself to police at Wrexham, Clwyd.

Judge Ian Crompton said Wass had duped his victims, who "were not wealthy, but who had worked hard and have been absolutely devastated by your dishonesty," and many had lost their life savings.

One man, a former tanker driver with Shell who invested more than £146,000 with Wass, had lost the lot and now relies on an old age pension but has a mortgage of £33,000 and debts of £16,000, he said.

"The attitude of the police is that you could have been more helpful than you were in saying where the money has gone. Your explanation to the court is that you don't know. That's a lot of money not to know where it has gone."

The court has heard that in the early 1980s Wass was dismissed from Lloyds in Altrincham after opening loan accounts on his own behalf using the names of the bank's customers and moving money around the bank for his own purposes.

It is not possible to say how much the bank lost but no criminal proceedings were taken against him, said Mr Biddle.

Mr Tony Ostrin, defending, said that Wass, "a broken man", had tried his best to get a business going, but made a series of "outrageous" and "rotten" investments.

Wass, a tied agent to Legal and General, had considered he could do better than putting the money with the firm, but found he was using money from subsequent investments to make up for money lost on the first investments.

He had "robbed Peter to pay Paul". Things had snowballed and he had been holding these investments "like balls in the air" until they all came crashing to the ground, he said.

The offences coincided with the breakdown of his marriage, when Wass left his wife and two young sons for a younger woman who has since deserted him, said Mr Ostrin.

Wass cannot remember each individual transaction and was bamboozled by it all. "He found himself in a Catch 22 situation. He is absolutely devastated as to what he has done," said Mr Ostrin.

After leaving Lloyds, Wass considered he had learned enough about money, banking, and finance, that he would take up lecturing and did so for four-and-a-half years.

He also worked as a lecturer after these matters came to light to get money, but because of the pressures hanging over him he could not do it, said Mr Ostrin, who read out a reference from West Cheshire College.

Wass, 47, formerly of Quarry Road, Neston, pleaded guilty to 10 specimen charges of theft totalling £314,648 between January 26, 1989, and July 23, 1996, and had a further 50 similar offences taken into consideration.

Wass, who has no previous convictions, also pleaded guilty to carrying out an unauthorised investment business between January 1, 1989, and July 31, 1996.

He showed no emotion when led away to the cells.

Outside court, a spokesman for a group of the cheated investors, Chris Cummings, who lost £23,500, said that they were happy with the sentence: "But it doesn't bring back our money.

"Our case now starts again. It has taken two years to get this far and we hope it won't take another two years before we get our money.

"Ninety per cent of it has gone, that is certain, but we are going to pursue our claims.

"We would warn other potential investors to go to a big firm, which is chartered."

Asked how they feel about Wass, Mr Cummings replied: "To take money from people who are disabled or retired and to leave them with nothing - what can you say?"

Another member of the group, Terry Davies, expressed anger with Wass's former employers, Lloyds Bank.

"They decided not to go through with criminal proceedings. We feel if they had done so all this might have been prevented.

"Our group will have another meeting later this month and we will decide how to progress our case," said Mr Davies.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.