Sheffield financial advisor who stole more than £600,000 from his own family jailed for over six years

David Nicholas King, known as Nick, stole hundreds of thousands of pounds of his late grandmother's life savings, and 'frittered away' cash which had been given to him by other members of the family who thought he was going to invest it for them using his financial expertise.

Instead, King spent the money on holidays, designer clothing, expensive cars, days out shooting and even a trip to the Ryder Cup in the USA.

The 38-year-old, of Foolow, Eyam, Derbyshire, but previously of Sheffield, was today sentenced to six years and four months in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of theft and two counts of fraud by false representation.

On the three counts of theft, King was sentenced to four years, two years and two years respectively, to run concurrently.

On the two counts of fraud, he was handed 28 months and six months, with the 28 months to run consecutively with the four year theft sentence, giving a total sentence of six years four months.

Passing sentence, Judge David Dixon said: “The Crown’s case sets out that you have lied not once, not twice, but countless times. You have repeated these lies time and time again.

“The victims have been made a mockery of and the impact on your family has been huge. You were a selfish, self-centred, coward.”

Speaking after the hearing, investigating officer DC Paul Douglas said stealing his family members’ money in this way was the ‘ultimate betrayal’.

He said: “All of them trusted King to invest their money carefully on their behalf as their financial advisor. Instead, he frittered it away on a lavish lifestyle he could not afford.

“King’s offending has torn his family apart and they have all found it extremely difficult to come to terms with the fact they were lied to for years. In all this time, King has shown barely any remorse for his actions.”

"Matters finally came to a head in September 2017 when family members wanted to confront King about various discrepancies in his stories about what was happening with the money.

"His mother called him and after asking what was going on he replied: 'Mum, you're not going to like this but I've spent the money, and never invested the money from the sale of Granny's house.'”

As well as spending the money from his grandmother’s savings, King, who ran his own business called DNK Wealth Management, told his mother he had also started spending the money contained in two bonds.

Further offending occurred when King spent £20,000 of his mother's inheritance from his grandfather, and £10,000 of his ex-Royal Marine brother's savings.

An additional £35,000 was stolen from a close family friend, whom he had tricked into handing over funds under the guise they would be used as 'bridging finance' for one of his clients for a house purchase. In fact, the client never existed.

And on several occasions, King had drawn up bogus paperwork and documentation to make it look like the various 'investments' were performing as planned.

Earlier, impact statements from King’s victims had been read to the court.

The defendant’s mother, Dr Jennifer King, urged the court not to impose a custodial sentence but many other family members were less forgiving.

King’s brother, Thomas, and his cousin Rachel Lanham both gave moving statements detailing their anger and sense of betrayal.

Nick had been his ‘best friend’ growing up and he had been honoured to be chosen as his best man, said Thomas.

“I am just relieved that my granny and grandpa are no longer here to witness what has happened,” added Rachel.

After Judge Dixon passed sentence, he gave King an opportunity to address both the court and his family.

He said: “I would like to apologise unreservedly. I hope as a family we can begin to move on and I will do my best to repair that.”

Directly addressing King’s family, Judge Dixon added: “I hope you can pull together again. I know how hard that will be but I hope you can.”