A trusted financial adviser who cheated a 74-year-old York widow out of £50,000 was this afternoon jailed for two years.

Anthony Whitney, 56, "systematically" defrauded the elderly woman over a four-year period, York Crown Court heard.

Only when she became alarmed by his prevarication and turned to a second financial adviser for help did his crimes come to light.

The court heard there was no chance of Whitney, who was made bankrupt last year, re-paying any of the money.

Jailing him for two years, Judge Paul Hoffman said: "This was a serious breach of trust that you committed against a vulnerable victim.

"She loyally chose to remain your client after you had left Allied Dunbar and you repaid her by systematically defrauding her of nearly £50,000.

"It is all gone; partly for your own purposes, partly it was a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul."

Whitney, of High Lane, Woodley, Stockport, pleaded guilty to ten charges of deception - his first offences.

Dan Edwards, prosecuting, said that the widow's investments were managed since 1985 by Allied Dunbar who employed Whitney to look after them for her.

He left the company in 1993, but continued to advise the widow.

He persuaded her to write out cheques to him which she thought would be invested in off-shore accounts but in reality were used for his own purposes.

Between 1994 and 1998, he cheated her out of £49,750.

By Christmas 1998, she had difficulty cashing some of her savings and in the summer of 1999, she contacted independent financial advised Gerald Gray who was so concerned by her account that he called in North Yorkshire police's fraud squad.

The court was told on Whitney's behalf that he had personal financial problems following an operation for a tumour in his right ear which eventually led to him leaving Allied Dunbar.

They had to pursue him through the courts for money he owed them.

He became involved with another company that left him in difficulties, and was made bankrupt in July 1999.

DC Gary Duckwith, of the fraud squad, said after the case: "I think it is a sentence he deserves. He obviously got the respect of this woman and chose to abuse it."