Mortgage broker Nigel Alexander McClements fleeced around £75,000 from almost 100 clients to help fund his £400,000 home, stable full of horses and penchant for gambling.

McClements used the money to buy a BMW and send his children to expensive private schools.

Over a ten year period he gambled away £500,000 - £100,000 more than the value of the house he lived in with his partner Andreana Humble.

His fraudulent behaviour did not even stop when he was declared bankrupt in 2008 and banned from working as a financial advisor – five years after first setting up his business Northumbria Mortgages.

Prosecuting counsel Tim Evans told Carlisle Crown Court: “The lavish lifestyle he had selected for himself did not change at all when he got into financial difficulties.

“It was very much a case of ‘I’m all right, Jack’.”

McClements continued practicing as a mortgage advisor promising ‘cheap mortgages’ to his trusting and unsuspecting clients.

He failed to organise the mortgages and when nothing happened he told his bewildered clients to give him more money to ‘speed the process up’.

Soon his victims became suspicious and Cumbria police launched an investigation last spring after receiving complaints.

Sensing the heat was closing in McClements fled to South Africa, and then to Northern Ireland where the law caught up with him – with no help from Humble who had falsely claimed she had no knowledge of his whereabouts.

Humble even told McClements to transfer £6,337 into their joint account to pay for living expenses, despite knowing he had admitted to the fraud charges.

“There was still their house, their horses and their lifestyle, but the choice was made for some of that money to go to defray their expenses as opposed to going back to those who had been defrauded,” Mr Evans said.

McClements pleaded guilty to 16 charges of fraud and asked for 54 others to be taken into consideration. Humble admitted a charge of acquiring £6,337 of criminal property, knowing or suspecting that it was the proceeds of his criminal conduct. The case continues.