A Suffolk-based adviser and former STEP member, Steven Long, has been jailed for eight years and four months after pleading guilty to two counts of fraud by abuse of position after he and an associate helped themselves to client money which should have been placed into trusts.
Mr Long, 59, stole £11,577,762 from 115 victims along with financial adviser Raymond Simpson, 79, who was sentenced to five and a half years for the same offences.
Mr Simpson lives in Portugal and did not attend his trial or sentencing. A warrant for his arrest has been issued.
Mr Long and Mr Simpson ran businesses which targeted people seeking estate planning and inheritance tax advice.
Mr Long was a member of STEP, the professional body for trust and estate practitioners, which suspended Mr Long’s membership in 2017 after it received a number of complaints about him. Mr Long was permanently excluded from STEP membership in October 2018, following the completion of a disciplinary investigation.
The pair's activities between 2008 and 2018 were revealed after Mr Long's wealth management business group UWP collapsed in 2018.
A BBC investigation into the firm in 2018 highlighted concerns at the firm with a programme featuring some of those hit by Universal Wealth’s collapse.
Universal Wealth Management (FRN 487941) had been incorporated in July 2008. According to Companies House records it was dissolved in December 2018. It had been registered with the FCA in January 2009 but lost its authorisation in August 2016, according to the FCA Register.
The Financial Services Compensation Scheme declared Universal Wealth Management as failed in April 2017.
Raymond Simpson of Gateshead was a director of the firm along with Deborah Simpson. Mr Long does not appear on the FCA Register but was a director of a number of Ipswich-based companies, according to STEP. They included Universal Tax Solutions, which traded as Universal Wealth Preservation, while associated companies included Universal Asset Protection Ltd and Universal Trustees Ltd, according to STEP.
Companies House records show that Mr Long was a director of 15 different companies which he ran from his Ipswich office. They include Crown Law Ltd, set up in August 2008, Universal Tax Solutions and Universal Trustees both set up in February 2009.
In October 2010 he set up Inheritance Advice UK followed by Universal Retirement Solutions in January 2011. In February 2011 he set up Universal Seminars and Universal Lawyers, while in June 2011 he aded Universal Asset Protection.
He then set up The Inheritance Advice Service in September 2011, before adding Universal Business Angels and Universal Trust And Estate Practitioners in January 2014 and Universal Trustee Management in February 2014. In April 2015 he started Universal Trustee Services and started his last business SFM Law in March 2016, just months before Universal Wealth Management lost its FCA authorisation.
Universal Asset Protection entered into compulsory liquidation in May 2018.
STEP said clients of the firm contacted it with concerns about the management of their trusts, with delays in estate administration and payments from the trusts being made, in addition to being unable to ascertain the whereabouts of their assets, or retrieve original wills and LPAs held in secure storage.
In December 2018 Mr Long was jailed for eight months for failing to provide information to help track down millions of pounds of missing money taken from pensioners through his Universal Wealth Protection scheme.
Homeowners of, or near retirement age, across several counties including Essex, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Kent, had been lured in by marketing seminars, which offered to manage and protect trust funds for inheritance planning.
The company drafted and managed trusts, wills, and lasting powers of attorney for its clients. In addition, the company helped clients with various estate planning matters.
The firm’s victims had been promised generous returns as Mr Long assured them their money would be placed into ring-fenced, risk-free, long-term trusts. But the two crooks ploughed investors’ money into, "increasingly reckless investments," Southwark Crown Court heard.
The court was told that a holiday to Mexico enjoyed by Mr Long and his then-wife Melanie was paid for with clients’ funds, as well as a timeshare property, the BBC reported.
During the case it was reported that Judge Gregory Perrins said: "No sentence I impose today will feel long enough to those who have suffered so much." He added: "Your offending has taken a very heavy toll on the lives of so many and you should feel deeply ashamed."
He told Long "his company had specifically targeted elderly people and people of retirement age. They were not wealthy, but ordinary people who had worked hard all their lives. You knowingly and dishonestly abused the trust placed in you by using victim money for your own ends."
Mr Simpson was sentenced in absence and the judge said: “I have no doubt Simpson assisted in this course of events in an attempt to make a personal profit without taking any risk. Simpson knew better than most to take money from trusts but carried on regardless. Simpson’s motivation, like that of Long’s, was that of simple greed, and he knew what he was doing was unlawful.”
Lead police investigator Detective Constable Lisa Hunt, said Mr Long had presented himself as the, "consummate professional, seemingly backed by accreditation for practitioners in the trust and estate sector" and many placed their "full trust" in him.