02 January 2019
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A financial adviser who conned clients out of £4.5m to spend on prostitutes and gambling was jailed last month for eight years. Neil Bartlett, 53, was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court after pleading guilty to 14 counts of fraud.
Neil Bartlett lavished £180,000 on two escorts alone and jetted off to New York and the Maldives. Bartlett, of Ainsdale, Merseyside, claimed to be investing his victims' pensions and life savings, police said. He took £600,000 from one woman alone.
Judge Alan Conrad admonished him for "living the life of a millionaire" on his victims' cash.
"You were gambling away a large part of the money entrusted to you, while maintaining a playboy lifestyle with expensive prostitutes and luxury foreign travel," the judge said.
"You were gambling away a large part of the money entrusted to you, while maintaining a playboy lifestyle with expensive prostitutes and luxury foreign travel," the judge said.
"You even boasted in messages to people of the debauched life that you were living," he added.
One of Bartlett's victims told the court in December: "He has no conscience, he is morally devoid… If he is showing signs of remorse, take it from me, it is an act."
Earlier this year Merseyside Police received a number of reports from Action Fraud (the National Fraud & Cyber Crime Reporting Centre) about Bartlett's business practices and a fraud investigation commenced.
The fraud involved investing people's money, pensions and often life savings into what they thought was a safe investment account with interest.
It emerged that Bartlett had created a sole trader account with the same name as the company he worked for and paid himself the money.
It is believed the fraud started in approximately 2013 and continued for five years. In total there were 24 victims.
Earlier this year he took more than £740,000 from friends he had known since pre-school, together with his friend's parents and his own family.
He also took advantage of being the Power of Attorney for a vulnerable elderly victim and defrauded her.
Detective Sergeant Christopher Hawitt of Merseyside Police said: "We welcome the sentencing of Neil Bartlett and hope that he will now spend the considerable future thinking about the consequences of his actions.
"It is never nice for anyone to fall victim to fraud but this was a particularly unpleasant case for Bartlett's victims as some of them had known him for over 50 years and so trusted him with, in some cases, their life savings.
