Jailed former Burns-Anderson AR to be stripped of assets

A former Burns-Anderson appointed representative jailed in April for defrauding clients out of more than £7m is set to return to court to be stripped of his assets.

Grahame Whitehead, director at Woodbridge Financial Services, was sentenced to ten years in prison after pleading guilty to 49 fraud charges.

As a result of his activities, he received a total of £11.9m in investments, repaying some £4.7m but leaving an outstanding loss of £7.2m.

Whitehead is set to return to Chelmsford Crown Court next month for a proceeds of crime hearing, where his finances will be probed to see if there are any assets available with which to compensate victims, according to the Essex Echo.

His clients had been instructed to pay funds they wished to invest into one of several bank accounts, which were controlled by Whitehead and dispersed either to his own personal bank account or those of his family.

Investors were told their cash would either be invested in Credit Suisse accounts, or used to provide short term bridging finance to facilitate property purchases by the Salvation Army. Both schemes were fictitious.

At his trial in April, the court heard how Whitehead was paying £5,000 a month to a woman he was in a relationship with, funding her "lavish lifestyle" and buying her a house.

Meanwhile, some of his victims were faced with the prospect of losing their homes.

After he was sentenced, detective inspector Paul Dibell, of Essex police, said: "This was the largest fraud ever investigated by Essex police and involved huge sums of money, was highly sophisticated, carefully planned and executed with confidence and determination to defraud a large number of vulnerable individuals."