Broker Nicholas Levene jailed for £32m Ponzi scheme Nicholas Levene, 48, orchestrated a lucrative Ponzi scheme, living the high life and raking £316 million into his bank accounts between April 2005 and September 2009. Today he was locked up at Southwark Crown Court, in London, after he admitted ripping off a series of high-fliers, including Sir Brian Souter and his sister Ann Gloag, the founders of the Stagecoach bus and rail group; Richard Caring, owner of The Ivy and Le Caprice restaurants in London's West End; and Russell Bartlett, director of the R3 Investment Group and former owner of Hull City Football Club. Levene, nicknamed Beano because of his childhood love of the comic book, was a successful City worker with an estimated wealth of between £15 million and £20 million in 2005. But he was addicted to gambling, spending fortunes on spread betting, and had an insatiable taste for luxury. Levene, who has been seen by psychiatrists from The Priory, admitted one count of false accounting, one of obtaining a money transfer by deception, and 12 counts of fraud. The amount attributed to Levene's false accounting was £32,352,270. But with his customers' lost profits, the amount shot up to a total of £101,685,406. Serious Fraud Office investigators discovered that during the four years of 48-year-old Levene's offending, he paid out £310 million from his accounts. Some of the money was given to investors to keep them temporarily happy but he also spent massive amounts on schools for his children, cars, flash holidays for his family, yachts and properties, including a home in Israel. He also spent £588,000 on a family celebration. Andrew Edis QC said Levene spent £18,311,076 on funding his lifestyle. "It was a very lavish lifestyle sustained out of the proceeds of this fraud," said the barrister. It is an example of an extremely sophisticated arrangement of moving money between different back accounts in different jurisdictions. He added: "He spent a high proportion of it on himself and his family living the high life and then, when approached for repayment by investors, fobbing them off and using dishonestly created documents and false promises." Levene, a former deputy chairman of Leyton Orient Football Club, and of Barnet Road, Barnet, Hertfordshire, would take from Peter to pay Paul and shift the funds between accounts in financial havens Jersey, Switzerland and Israel. With his network of contacts and strong reputation, Levene won people's faith with seemingly concrete investment deals from which he would take a commission or fee. The married father of three took millions of investors' funds, promising to invest it in lucrative rights-issue releases from companies such as HSBC, Lloyds TSB, and the mining companies Xstrata and Rio Tinto. But he dug an ever-deepening financial hole for himself, having to repeatedly "fob off" clients and make excuses about why he could not pay them. Often he had not invested the money where he promised to, spending it instead on himself or redistributing it among his angry clients. In 2009, as his web of lies got more and more complex, he appeared to forget which deals he had promised to set up for clients and had to ask them to confirm where their money was and how much they were expecting back. Sir Brian and Mrs Gloag gave him £5 million in 2009 to invest in Xstrata shares. But Levene spread the money around his various accounts and used it to repay various clients, including Parviz Hakim-Rad, owner of Jersey company Tadco Ltd, who was due £3,875,000. When Levene eventually gave Mr Rad a cheque for the money, it bounced. The Stagecoach bosses later gave Levene a further £2.5 million to invest. In August 2009 he went to see Ms Gloag to confess he had not invested the money but had spent it on spread betting. Mr Edis said: "He appeared at a loss to understand why Mrs Gloag was pursuing action against him and asked if it would make her feel better if he was put behind bars. He later confessed to Mr Souter to having gambling and personal problems. Restaurateur Mr Caring did not give the Serious Fraud Office a prosecution statement and the charge relating to him concerned Levene's false accounting. But Mr Caring gave the fraudster two payments totalling £10 million, expecting it to be invested. Levene instructed a man called Rafael Haas to create fake bank statements so he could show Mr Caring his money had been invested when it had not. He also got Haas to forge another bank statement - one of his own, changing his bank balance to show an extra £42 million. The court heard that despite at least two freezing orders, Levene still managed to move millions of pounds around. Levene also took £1.2 million from Mr Bartlett and used the money to repay other investors.