A CROOKED financial advisor who plundered the pensions and savings plans of his North-East clients was yesterday locked up for three years.

Adrian Bancroft was told by judge, Recorder Neil Davey: “Your victims are not just names on a piece of paper, they are real people whose lives you have blighted.”

Middlesbrough-based Bancroft took a total of nearly £316,000 from five savers during a five-year deception from 2004 until his arrest last year.

Teesside Crown Court was told that some money was taken from investment plans, while some deposits were simply not made.

Bancroft’s barrister said the palaeontology graduate was “wholly unsuited”

to a career in finance, but had failed to get a job in the field he loved.

James Gregory, mitigating, said it was “a thousand pities” that Bancroft could not follow his dreams after getting his Phd at Durham University.

The 52-year-old answered an advertisement in a local newspaper to become an independent financial advisor, and initially the business did well.

But by 2004 and with a dwindling client list, Bancroft resorted to dishonest practises to “prop up a pretty routine life”, Mr Gregory told the court.

When he was arrested last year, he told police: “I’ve lived a complete and utter fabrication ... I’ve just woven this web for myself.”

The court heard that one of the victims – a 71-year-old man from Hartlepool who lost £115,000 – has since been widowed and has had to sell his home.

The former oil and gas worker says he lies awake at night feeling physically sick because of the position he has been left in by a man he trusted.

Jolyon Perks, prosecuting, said: “He is now forced to live an isolated, penny-pinching existence away from his friends while still grieving the loss of his wife.”

Bancroft admitted ten charges of fraud, four of obtaining a money transfer by deception, three of acquiring criminal property and one of transferring criminal property.

Mr Gregory said Bancroft, of Pendy, Wrexham, North Wales, will lose all his assets and “will do all he can from now onwards to put things right”.

After the case, Detective Constable Rachel Peake, said: “He behaved in a dishonest manner, showing a blatant disregard for his client’s financial welfare.”

An application for compensation for the victims will also be made.