Geoffrey Langdale from North Yorkshire “abused his position as a trusted accountant” to encourage 28 investors to put money into his fraudulent scheme over 11 years, the Crown Prosecution Service, which brought the charges, said.

Langdale fooled genuine investors by producing fraudulent documents and forging company logos to imply their money was safe.

Instead of investing his clients’ money as promised, he used more than £1m to prop up his own companies including investing in a chemical company that later collapsed.

As his debt spiralled out of control, he encouraged more and more people to invest in the scam.

“This conviction highlights Geoffrey Langdale’s dishonesty and the blatant disregard for the welfare of his clients,” Debra Chan, senior Crown prosecutor in the CPS, said.

Between 2002 and 2013, Langdale organised the ‘Ponzi’ investment scheme, with victims each investing from £10,000 to £260,850.

Langdale told the victims that their money would be invested into an ‘umbrella’ account with high interest rates of a legitimate company which was a subsidiary of a high street bank.

In total, Langdale received £2.3m in investments from his victims, only returning £1.1m to some of them, with the rest still owed to others.

He was convicted of obtaining a money transfer by deception and fraud. His victims were spread across North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, Suffolk and North Wales