Convicted man has £700k of assets seized

A Leighton man currently serving a jail sentence over a £1.4m fraud has had his assets seized and sold.

David Vaughan Jones (pictured), was sentenced to six years in prison in May 2017 after being convicted of numerous theft and fraud crimes.

The former solicitor-turned-financial-advisor, tricked friends and fellow members of his Newtown church to buy into bogus off-shore money schemes.

Following his sentence Jones was made subject to an application by the Dyfed-Powys Police Financial Crime Team for the recovery of all known assets held by him in order to compensate his victims as much as possible. 

And now, His Honour Judge Parry made an order against Jones in which he declared his criminal benefit to be £1,861,211.74 with available assets of £704,292. In order to achieve the asset figure the Financial Crime team have, over the last year, overseen the sale of Jones' home and his car and seized the funds in his bank accounts. In addition, he is also required to sell his shareholding in a local business or face a further 42 months in prison should he fail to achieve an acceptable value for the shares.

The £704,292.16 is to be distributed amongst the 14 victims pro-rata to take account of their individual losses.

Paul Callard, Financial Crime Team lead, said: “The actions of David Vaughan Jones caused considerable misery to a lot of people. We will use all legislation available to us to recover money and assets obtained by criminals to ensure that crime doesn’t pay.”