The former head of a charity for disabled workers has been jailed for five years after admitting defrauding its pension scheme and using the money to buy houses in England and France.
Patrick McLarry took more than £250,000 from the pension fund of Yateley Industries for the Disabled, using it to buy properties for himself and his wife and to pay off a debt linked to a pub lease. The Hampshire-based charity, which trains and employs about 60 people with disabilities, came within days of closing because of the fraud, leaving staff and service users traumatised.
Sentencing him at Winchester Crown Court, Judge Andrew Barnett described the offences as “an appalling dishonesty and breach of trust”, adding: “You quite deliberately and in a very calculating way milked the fund of a considerable amount of money which was spent for your own needs and your wife’s.”
The court heard that McLarry set up a new company to manage the pension fund, where he was one of only two directors, and later a third company that used the cover of trading in antiques to transfer stolen funds to France. He created a fictional loss to conceal the missing money. Prosecutor Alex Stein said outside court: “This was a complex, sophisticated fraud undertaken over a number of years against vulnerable victims. Mr McLarry held himself out as a pillar of the community, a legitimate businessman and a man with an MBE.”
Nicola Parish, executive director of The Pensions Regulator, which brought the prosecution, said: “McLarry tried every trick in the book to hide his actions and squander the pension pots of those he was responsible for but we were able to uncover the truth and bring him to justice. We will now work to seize assets from McLarry so that as much of the money as possible is returned to its rightful owners.”
McLarry, from Bere Alston village near Plymouth, was also previously convicted of failing to disclose bank statements to investigators. His wife, Sandra, 59, was cleared of money laundering charges after prosecutors offered no evidence. Work and Pensions Secretary Thérèse Coffey welcomed the sentence, saying: “Defrauding disabled people of their hard-earned pension savings is a despicable crime.”
