Financial Adviser Jailed for Conning Friends Out of £2m
Timothy Barnes didn't need to find strangers to con. He simply asked everyone he already knew.
Barnes, known locally as Paul, was sentenced to 11 years in prison at Worcester Crown Court on 19 June after admitting to defrauding 36 people and organisations out of almost £2 million.
A Trusted Face in a Small Village
Barnes lived in the close-knit Warwickshire village of Abbots Morton, where he was a familiar and respected financial adviser to many of his own neighbours.
According to the FCA Register, Barnes worked across several advisory firms between 2001 and 2021, including Sesame Select Services, Halcyon IFAs, Sanlam Partnership and the Tavistock Partnership.
That two-decade professional history gave him both the credibility and the client relationships he later exploited.
How He Approached Victims
Starting in November 2022, Barnes began asking people he knew for short-term "loans," claiming he urgently needed money for an inheritance tax bill or a divorce settlement.
He promised each lender repayment within days and often backed the request with a signed document or an emailed confirmation.
Once he had exhausted his personal network, Barnes turned to his own clients, using his knowledge of their wealth as their financial adviser to secure further loans.
He also created false documents to extract additional funds, eventually taking £1,754,736.68 from 34 individuals through these fake "loans" alone.
📰 Read Also: Doctors on Wheels Boss Guilty of HGV Medical Fraud
The Charity and the Residents' Association
Barnes was also chair of a well-known charitable trust, the Pershore-based British Motorcycle Charitable Trust, and had direct access to its accounts.
He convinced trustees that £206,500 would be used for the charity's work, then paid the money into his own account instead.
He additionally siphoned £1,245 from the residents' association of the estate where he lived, a group whose funds he also had access to.
Warwickshire Police later discovered that Barnes had been investing much of the stolen money into a cryptocurrency wallet.
📰 Read Also: LA Hospice Owner Used Dead Patients to Fund Rolls Royce in $27M Fraud
One Victim's Story
Carolyne Ryan-Bell, a 57-year-old professional horse trainer who lived doors away from Barnes, had known him for around 25 years through shared Christmases, ski trips and regular family meals.
When Barnes asked to borrow £40,000 in December 2022, claiming he needed to pay his late mother's inheritance tax, she says she "had no reason not to trust him."
Barnes later approached her elderly father for a further £30,000 to help repay her, even as the original debt remained unresolved.
Ryan-Bell eventually recovered £25,000 in instalments, but the remaining £15,000 is still missing.
A Second Family, the Same Pattern
Michele and Liam McFall of Stratford-upon-Avon had worked with Barnes as clients for more than a decade before their relationship became personal.
In 2022, the couple lent Barnes £10,000 after he sent them a signed repayment agreement that later turned out to be forged.
The promised repayment date passed while the McFalls were relying on the cash to complete a house purchase, leaving them, in Michele's words, unable to describe "the worry and the stress."
The Scale of the Deception
Barnes was arrested on 19 December 2023 on suspicion of fraud and money laundering, and later admitted 39 separate counts spanning fraud by false representation, supplying articles for use in fraud, and fraud by abuse of position.
Detective Sergeant Bev Hamilton of West Mercia Police's Economic Crime Unit said Barnes had abused his position as "a financial adviser, charitable trust chair and a neighbour and friend to many."
She said the case caused "significant harm across both his personal and professional circles" over the 18-month period Barnes operated the scheme.
📰 Read Also: Man Convicted of Murder After Holding Friend Captive
TL;DR
- Timothy "Paul" Barnes was jailed for 11 years for defrauding 36 people and organisations out of almost £2 million.
- He secured £1,754,736.68 in fake short-term "loans" from 34 individuals he knew personally or professionally.
- He also stole £206,500 from a charity where he served as chair, and £1,245 from his own residents' association.
- Barnes had worked as a licensed financial adviser across multiple firms between 2001 and 2021.
- He invested much of the stolen money into a cryptocurrency wallet.
Read More
You might also like
Politics & World News Editor
James Mitchell has covered US and UK politics for over a decade, with a focus on elections, foreign policy, and Capitol Hill. He breaks down complex political stories into clear, fast analysis.
