An accountant has been jailed for more than five years for conning a man with learning difficulties out of his Harrogate home and more than £30,000 of savings.

Sukhdev Singh, 73 spent the money within a fortnight on expensive jewellery, gambling, bank transfers to accounts he held in India, private school tuition fees and other domestic spending.

Singh persuaded his vulnerable victim into signing over his inherited £300,000 family home in an up-market location in Harrogate. He also made a sustained and determined but failed attempt to have the title deeds to the victim’s inherited Spanish holiday home fraudulently transferred to himself.

Today, detectives who led the investigation said Singh displayed astounding levels of arrogance, remaining unrepentant throughout his trial for what amounted to be a sickening and callous series of frauds perpetrated against a vulnerable victim.

The man Singh targeted, who has not been named to protect his identity, is in his 50s. But a psychologist who assessed him confirmed his mental capacity to be that of a 12-year-old, someone clearly vulnerable to potential exploitation.

Singh convinced the victim to let his sole trader accountancy business, SS Singh & Co, receive and hold his savings subsequent to the death of his parents some years earlier.

Offshore accounts

Singh, of Chelwood Drive, Moor Allerton in Leeds, had learned of all the assets owned by the victim which had been bequeathed to him by his parents.

These assets included the property in Harrogate, an apartment in Spain and tens of thousands of pounds in offshore savings accounts held with banks based in Gibraltar and Jersey.

By 2016, Singh had transferred the victim’s Harrogate house into the ownership of a company owned and controlled by himself; namely SS and SK Lalli Ltd.

The Land Registry title of the property was thereafter held in the name of SS & SK Lalli Ltd, which appeared to show a purchase price paid during the transaction. However, there was in fact no exchange of funds from Singh to pay for the house, which resulted in him obtaining the house for no payment whatsoever.

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During the same year, Singh travelled to Gibraltar with the victim where he persuaded him to close his savings account and transfer the balance of more than £34,000 into the UK bank account of SS Singh & Co held by Mr. Singh. The victim was led to believe that Singh would look after these funds on his behalf.

Singh then spent the whole of the £34,000 over the following two weeks on jewellery, gambling transactions, transfers to bank accounts held by Singh in India and other personal domestic spending.

From 2016 onwards, the victim continued to live at the Harrogate property, but had unwittingly become the tenant of Singh’s company without so much as a tenancy agreement to protect him.

The crooked accountant then suggested to the man that he could move from his home address into a flat. Had this happened, Singh would have been free to treat the house as his own.

In the meantime Singh made attempts to ‘help’ the victim to close his Jersey-based savings account and to transfer the account funds into the business account of SS Singh & Co. The police investigation was able to prevent this from happening.

Singh also met with an official in Spain and tried to arrange for the victim’s inherited holiday home to be signed over to him. Fortunately, it failed at the eleventh hour as officials became suspicious when Singh could not provide proof that the purchase funds had been paid to the victim.

The defendant created a series of documents containing false statements to support the frauds.

Citizen's Advice raises concerns

By 2019, the victim’s Harrogate property had fallen into a significant state of disrepair and he approached the local Citizen’s Advice bureau for help.

This started a chain of events whereby Citizens Advice raised concerns with social services. Singh had let the home deteriorate so much that environmental health teams were brought in.

They became suspicious of the title transfer of the victim’s Harrogate home, and reported their suspicions to North Yorkshire Police’s economic crime unit in 2019.

The force’s specialist economic crime detectives began a long and complicated investigation that would ultimately see Singh arrested in July of that year, and the victim’s remaining assets were secured.

Singh was eventually charged with four counts of fraud, all relating to the one victim. During his trial, Singh refused to accept any wrongdoing and claimed he had acted entirely in the victim’s interests and had merely followed his instructions. Singh attempted to portray his victim as a shrewd and articulate man.

However, a jury didn’t believe Singh and found him guilty of all counts on 13th April this year. After the verdict he was remanded into custody.

A judge at York Crown Court today jailed Sukhdev Singh for five years and six months.

'Sickening and callous series of frauds'

After the sentence, former Detective Constable Ian Sharp, who led the investigation for North Yorkshire Police’s economic crime unit said: