At a hearing on Monday, Derby Crown Court heard how 67-year-old Martin Rigney, allegedly committed 22 counts of forgery involving tens of thousands of pounds of clients’ cash which was lost after it was invested into a fund that later went bankrupt.
Rigney ran advisory firm Topps Rogers Financial Management.
His clients, many of whom are pensioners, were originally advised to invest via Royal Skandia bonds with a safe, non-risky spread of investments in various funds.
Polish property fund
However, Rigney then allegedly forged signatures and switched the investments into the Curzon Capital Investment Poland Geared Growth Property fund.
The fund, an unregulated collective investment scheme, was suspended in 2008 and all investors have lost their money.
Consequently, Rigney claimed £371,149 in commission income for advising people to go into the Polish fund.
“Rigney was not concerned about getting clients to sign documents and he would sign them on their behalf. Signing them or forging their signatures on letters telling him what to do or on documents about knowing your client.
“The reason, the prosecution, say he was forging clients’ signatures was to hide from them what he was doing,” said prosecuting barrister Martin Hurst.
Clients clueless
Hurst added that many of the people in the trial had no idea their money was being invested into Polish property, explaining this kind of product could only be marketed to high-net worth individuals and was completely unsuitable for Rigney’s clients.
In one instance, Rigney forged the signatures of dementia sufferer Mary Dawson and her daughter, who had power of attorney so he could allegedly invest £76,000 of their money into the Polish fund. The daughter had been planning to use their investment to cover her now deceased mother’s nursing home costs.
Paul and Deborah Gregory, who emigrated to Australia, had the vast bulk of their £400,000 investment moved into the Polish fund with sustained forged signatures and they claim they were never consulted.
“He fobbed them off with stories about how much the fund would be worth and it would all be all right in the end,” said Hurst.
