
A crooked accountant from Leeds was sentenced to prison for duping a man with learning impairments out of his North Yorkshire property and £34,000 in savings.
Sukhdev Singh, 73, of Leeds, spent the money on jewellery, gambling, and school fees, as well as moving it to Indian bank accounts.
He was sentenced to five years and six months in prison at York Crown Court after being convicted of fraud following a trial.
Singh was branded as a “manipulative charlatan” by Det Con Ian Sharp.
According to North Yorkshire Police, Singh’s victim was in his 50s but had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old.
Detectives said by 2016 Singh had persuaded the man to sign over a £300,000 house in Harrogate, which he had inherited from his parents to his accountancy firm.
They said he also made “sustained and determined” attempts to do the same with a Spanish holiday home that had been left to him.
The following year, Singh accompanied the victim to Gibraltar and convinced him to liquidate his savings account and transfer the balance of more than £34,000 to him.
Singh stated he would manage the monies but wasted them within two weeks of receiving them, according to authorities.
Singh’s crimes were discovered in 2019 after the victim’s Harrogate property fell into disrepair and he sought assistance from the local Citizen’s Advice Bureau.
Officials grew sceptical about the property’s title transfer and notified the police.
Singh, of Chelwood Drive, Leeds, was prosecuted and convicted of four offences of fraud after a protracted police investigation.
Following sentencing, Mr Sharp, who led the investigation, said Singh had “full knowledge of [his victim’s] learning difficulties” and had “exploited these vulnerabilities for his own advantage in order to systematically asset-strip him”.
“Singh has behaved in an arrogant, deceitful way throughout and appears to have no remorse whatsoever for his crimes,” he said.
“It was a truly sickening and callous series of frauds committed against someone who should have been able to trust an accountant to act in his best financial interests.”
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