Pub tipster lost £1/2m of his friends’ money
November 23, 2007admin 1 Comment »A bungling City novice who frittered away more than £500,000 belonging to friends he met in the pub was jailed for four years on Wednesday.
Milverton Taylor guaranteed his victims – one of whom lost his entire pension – impressive returns if they trusted him with their cash.
Although Taylor did not set out to dupe people, when things went wrong he tried to recoup his losses with fruitless online gambling sprees.
When the truth emerged, most of those the 56-yearold conned were left destitute or homeless.
‘You, with a very pleasant winning way, persuaded them there would be no losses. You put their money on spread betting and lost heavily,’ said Judge John Price.
Taylor’s attempts to make money for others began honestly in 2003. But his deceit began when he profited from the stock market and spread betting.
He invited his victims, who he met in a pub, to invest – claiming their savings were guaranteed.
There was no evidence of an ‘extravagant lifestyle – there weren’t the Ferraris and expensive restaurants,’ the judge added.
Those who trusted Taylor, from Billericay, Essex, suffered enormously. One, Ron Profitt, lost his and his partner’s entire £160,000 pension fund.
His solicitor, Jonathan Mann, said Taylor had to live with the fact he had ruined lives. He added: ‘It was partly his amiable nature that led to people trusting him.’
But a jail term was inevitable, Taylor was told at London’s Southwark Crown Court. He admitted 20 counts of deception between November 2003 and May 2005.
Tags: City, lost, spread betting
Posted on April 3rd, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Yes, it was me who’s retirement plans ‘Melvyn’ has ruined.
My wife and I moved to France in 2006 and had, prior to that put a deposit on an old Mill in beautiful surroundings in which we were to spend the rest of our days only to find out what Mr Taylor had done with our money. We had to pull out of the purchase because we no longer had the funds to complete it causing us to lose another large sum of money to pay Notaires fees.
All in all I find it difficult to hate Melvyn because I was stupid enough to trust him with a large sum of money and I know that in his way, he did try to redeem himself.
We have had to adjust our lifestyle to suit our remaining funds, but that 150K wouldn’t half come in handy. Ron P