Former financial adviser Daniel Leon Williams (IRN: DLW00016) has been banned by the FCA from performing any function in relation to any regulated activity after he was jailed for fraud.
Mr Williams transfered more than £45,000 of a client’s money into his own personal account.
The FCA said the reason for its action “is that Daniel Leon Williams lacks honesty and integrity and is therefore not a fit and proper person because on 6 February 2024, Daniel Leon Williams, was convicted at Manchester City Magistrates’ Court of seven counts of fraud by abuse of position, contrary to Sections 1 and 4 of the Fraud Act 2006.
“On 27 November 2024, Daniel Leon Williams was sentenced at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court to two year and two months’ imprisonment for each offence, to be served concurrently.”
Mr Williams was approved by the FCA from 11 July 2002 to 26 July 2021. According to the FCA Register he worked at Berkeley Independent Advisers from 2002 until 2004, at which point he joined IPP Financial Services, a Preston-based firm of financial advisers.
It was during his time at IPP between 2019 and 2021, that Mr Williams transfered a client’s money into his own account.
At the sentencing hearing, the judge said Mr Williams’ client “was at a particularly vulnerable point in her long life… was probably as vulnerable as she had ever been.”
The judge said: “There was an element of targeting here: you saw an opportunity, it was a period of time… of isolation as 2019 moved into 2020, lockdown and Covid, and you became a significant support figure to the client.”
He told Mr Williams: “You are an experienced financial adviser and must have known from the start that what you were doing was not only criminally wrong, but was against every possible rule of your profession.”
The FCA said it notified Mr Williams of its decision to take the action and he did not refer the matter to the Tribunal. Accordingly, the FCA made the prohibition order with effect from 30 March.