Patrick McLarry sentenced to five years for defrauding scheme of more than £250,000

This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

The former head of a charity has been jailed for five years after he admitted defrauding a pension scheme for workers with disabilities and using the money to buy houses in England and France.

Patrick McLarry took more than £250,000 from the pension scheme of Yateley Industries for the Disabled and used it to buy homes for himself and his wife and pay off a debt for a pub lease.

The charity was so badly affected by the sophisticated fraud that it came within days of closing and service users and staff have been left traumatised.

Sentencing him at Winchester crown court, the judge, Andrew Barnett, described the fraud as “an appalling dishonesty and breach of trust”.

He said: “You quite deliberately and in a very calculating way milked the fund of a considerable amount of money which was spent for your own needs and your wife’s.”

Linda Matthews, the chief executive of the charity, said in a statement read to court that the pension scheme faced “significant difficulties” because of the stolen funds and had led to “immense stress and anxiety” for staff and users.

Alex Stein, prosecuting, said McLarry carried out the fraud by setting up a new company to manage the pension fund, of which he was one of only two directors and in the habit of authorising decisions.

He also set up a third company, which used the cover of trading in antiques to transfer the stolen money to France in order to buy two properties abroad before creating a fictional loss to explain the missing funds.

Stein said outside court: “This was a complex, sophisticated fraud undertaken over a number of years against vulnerable victims. Mr McLarry held himself out as a pillar of the community, a legitimate businessman and a man with an MBE.

“It took a persistent and tenacious investigation to uncover one of the most substantial pension frauds prosecuted to date.”

Nicola Parish, the executive director of The Pensions Regulator, which brought the prosecution, said: “McLarry tried every trick in the book to hide his actions and squander the pension pots of those he was responsible for but we were able to uncover the truth and bring him to justice.

“We will now work to seize assets from McLarry so that as much of the money as possible is returned to its rightful owners, who will rightly rely on it to deliver their pensions in retirement.”

McLarry, from Bere Alston village near Plymouth in Devon, was also previously convicted of failing to disclose his bank statements to the regulator’s investigators.

McLarry’s wife, Sandra, 59, was initially charged with four counts of money laundering but at an earlier hearing the prosecution said it would not proceed with the charges and offered no evidence. She was found not guilty.

Hampshire-based Yateley Industries has a onsite factory that trains and employs about 60 people with disabilities. It focuses on specialised packing, including machine shrink-wrapping and boxing.

The work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, said: “Defrauding disabled people of their hard-earned pension savings is a despicable crime. I welcome today’s sentence.

“This government will ensure that individuals who pocket people’s retirement funds feel the full force of the law. To protect savers further we are introducing new laws, with a maximum jail term of seven years, for those who wilfully or recklessly endanger pensions.”