FINANCIAL adviser Peter Barlow plotted to make his fortune by stealing nearly £100,000 from a farming family who trusted him with their money, a court heard.

Peter Barlow: "trusted with family's money"

The cash was part of about £500,000 he stole from clients and former friends after finding himself in "deep financial trouble", prosecutor Andrew Dallas told a jury at Leeds Crown Court.

As a struggling financial adviser based in York, Barlow was trying to support a wife and three sons on an income of between £3,000 to £4,000 a year...so, said Mr Dallas, he "conceived a grand plan ... to make himself a great deal of money".

Barlow, aged 57, of Tadcaster Road, Copmanthorpe, York, hoped to use an acre of land behind his home to develop for housing - and he took £96,000 from a trust fund to finance his scheme.

Barlow set up the fund for elderly farmer Alec Ingham in 1979, and when the farmer died in 1983 Barlow became sole trustee. Because of a tax hitch, the money could not be distributed to the beneficiaries, Mr Ingham's niece, Pauline Mills, his nephew, Timothy Ingham, and his great niece, Helen Ingham.

Barlow was still sole trustee with full control of the trust fund when, in 1990, he hit hard times as an independent financial adviser based in York.

There had already been housing development at Flaxman Croft and Barlow realised his land "had the potential for development".

But to make it practicable, he also needed to buy land from a neighbour, and buy another property to make sure of access.

"All of this needed lots of capital", Mr Dallas said. "The defendant was in desperate need of money, not only to finance his lifestyle, but also to progress his grand plan, the development project."

In 1986, Barlow had already used money from the trust fund to buy 15 investment bonds with a life insurance company.

Between May 1990 and October 1991, Mr Dallas said, he "systematically surrendered these bonds" to use the resulting £96,000 for his own purposes.

Quizzed later by police about what had happened to the money, he claimed he had used it to buy an £82,000 property at Carr Lane, Acomb, York, for Mr Ingham's beneficiaries.

But actually he used the property as his own offices, paid no rent, did not tell the beneficiaries about it - and even the solicitor who handled the purchase for him was "quite unaware the defendant regarded this property as belonging to the trust", Mr Dallas said.

In 1994, by which time he was "in deep financial trouble", he transferred the property to his son, Charles Barlow, in an attempt to keep it out of the hands of creditors.

Mr Dallas said: "The Crown says it is quite inconceivable that if he really did regard it as belonging to the trust, he would not have put it in the name of the trust at that time.

"The prosecution say the defendant has in effect stolen the value of these bonds."

Barlow denies 11 counts of theft, including a total of £96,000 from the Ingham Trust, £299,520.49 from a "rich and elderly client and friend" Mr Edward Atherton Hickson, and £5,000 from the 1987 Hickson Trust.

One of the counts relates to the theft of shares belonging to Mr Hickson.

The total value of shares and money stolen from clients and former friends was about £500,000, Mr Dallas alleged.

The case is expected to last between five and six weeks.

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