AN accountant persuaded a woman to invest her life savings of £450,000 with his company, but claims his mental illness means he can’t remember where most of it has gone.

Yet Leslie Lesser, 75, a former financial director of Southend United Football Club, continues to offer unregulated financial advice from his home in Thorpe Bay, an Echo undercover probe can reveal.

The semi-retired businessman, who also acts as executor for wills, hasn’t returned about £300,000 of the huge sum Maggie Tuttle, 66, invested with his limited company Estuary Trustees.

He claims ongoing mental problems mean he has no idea what he did with it.

The Echo can reveal it is not the first time Mr Lesser has blamed the loss of massive sums of cash on his health.

More than 15 years ago, a previous finance firm he ran, called Premium Finance, was liquidated and it left him owing friends and associates in the Southend business community about £2.5million.

The current situation has left Ms Tuttle, a campaigner against hormone replacement therapy drugs, penniless and forced her to sell her home in Poynings Avenue, Southend.

She invested money with him over several months from 2006, with the largest chunk, £280,000, sent to Estuary Trustees in October 2007. Mr Lesser personally guaranteed this investment against his own assets and an alleged £1million value of his firm, promising an interest rate of 1 per cent a month.

Mr Lesser also said it could be withdrawn at a month’s notice on Estuary Trustees paperwork seen by the Echo.Far from having £1million assets, we later discovered Estuary Trustees only made a profit of £958 in 2007 and has assets of just £3,858, according to its latest published accounts up to December 2007.

Ms Tuttle has not received all the interest and after repeatedly trying to withdraw the capital, Mr Lesser claimed in April he was undergoing a breakdown and contemplating suicide.

However, this month he offered financial advice to an Echo reporter posing as a potential client and he suggested investing up to £30,000 through Estuary Trustees.

Lesser who has been involved in freemasonry and sat on Southend Council’s Business and Tourism Partnership and Southend Business Partnership, was in the online Independent Financial Advisor guide until being removed due to our expose.

Those offering professional financial advice or investment schemes must be authorised by the Financial Services Authority. He has not been registered since 2006, as an agent for Legal and General.

When Premium Finance folded, it forced his bankruptcy and resignation from the institute of Chartered Accountants, but he rebuilt a business managing estates through Estuary Wills.

Cape and Dalgleish, the London chartered accountants which liquidated Premium Finance, sent a dossier of concerns on Lesser to the Department of Trade and Industry, and there was a police probe, but no charges were brought.

Despite this, Mr Lesser managed to register Estuary Wills with the Financial Services Authority and trades as an incorporated financial accountant due to joining the Association of International Accountants. He has been involved with 32 limited companies, including as a director of Blacks Leisure Group, which owned outdoor shop Millets, until December 1993.

Today, he remains a director of several companies.

In May, he helped set up Cape Entertainments – just weeks after he had told Ms Tuttle of his breakdown. The firm deals in holiday packages in Cape Town, South Africa. But he resigned as a director earlier this month.

Ms Tuttle, who founded the Menopausal Helpline to raise awareness of side effects of hormone replacement therapy, had known Mr Lesser ten years when he persuaded her to invest £450,000 from 2006.

A businesswoman who cashed in on rising property prices, she had moved back to the UK with the money after selling a successful second-hand quality furniture shop in Spain called Ardly Arrods.

She said: “He said he could give me a better rate than the bank at 1 per cent a month.

“Initially he got £50,000 from me, then he told me every time I moved house to send him the capital I did not need. He was paying out £500 a month on the first £50,000.”

When she tried to withdraw most of her money last June, to buy the home she has just had to sell, he only gave her £150,000.

He promised the situation would improve and agreed to pay her mortgage bill from the interest on the remaining £300,000. Yet these payments later bounced.

Accountant advises me to set up a 'building society'

WITH smart, casual attire and a warm manner, Leslie Lesser welcomed me into his home in the affluent Burlescoombe Road, Thorpe Bay, to go through “my affairs”.

I contacted him through a website listing as independent financial adviser on the IFA Guide, posing as a man who had inherited £98,000 and a mortgage-free bungalow.

His first-floor office was adorned with family photos and a certificate from the Provincial Grand Lodge of Essex Freemasons.

Wife Joyce, 72, served a cuppa as he took down details about the inheritance. A pet cat sunning itself on his desk added to the informality.

Mr Lesser opened by saying: “I specialise in inheritance tax, trusts, wills, tax, estates.”

He suggested spreading the money across premium bonds, ISAs, instant-access savings and insurance bonds, and scoured the financial section of the Daily Telegraph for interest rates.

Mr Lesser said he could split the money into two and put it in “some safe hands” while we decided what to do.

He said he acted for Legal & General, a firm he has not been an agent for since April 2006, according to the Financial Services Authority website.

He suggested handing up to £30,000 to Estuary Trustees, in a convoluted scheme loaning money to other clients. In a complex arrangement, which he said could not be advertised, he talked of loaning through Estuary Trustees to elderly clients keen to release equity.

The set-up meant there being a charge in my favour on the pensioner’s property, meaning I could force sale of their home if they fell behind with the loan.

He said: “One of them would have to be under my control, which is the one for the mortgage. I’d have to know I had the funds available.

“In effect, you are lending money to the homeowner. You get a mutual agreement and hold the deeds on security.

“You find a client who has property that they are prepared to put up for security. The security is there and on that you could get what they would pay to a building society, which might be 6 per cent for a couple of years. It would be hand-selected clients, someone I know and they have a property and you hold the deeds.

“We do equity release schemes for them when we take over their home and give them a mortgage on that. It gives them some money for their old age.”

He said they repaid the loan or the properties were sold over two to three years. This would bring in up to 7 per cent interest for the lender.

If they die, or went into care, the property is sold and the lender would get the capital back, on top of monthly interest, he said.

He said, in effect, I would be setting up as a building society, adding: “There is no reason why an individual can’t do it. I organise it through Estuary Trustees, but it will be in your name. I could have a couple of people interested.

“Very often, I am the trustee anyway, because I am the executor of their will.”

When asked what would happen if they could not repay, he said: “Well, you would have the right to take the property, but that would never happen. That is what the charge is for. It is all done privately. You cannot advertise it or anything like that.

“My fee will be 1 per cent of whatever is invested. I’ll make sure you get that money back – and some.”

He then suggested becoming executor of the inheritance. He immediately took details to set up a simple will. With no wife or dependants, he suggested I named him as executor.

He said: “I would suggest leaving it in a specialist trust, leaving it to your executor’s discretion to pass to your partner at that time, or, if you are married, to your wife.

“Have you got any pet charities or would you want to leave it to the trustees to decide?”

The will would cost £99 to arrange. As I got ready to leave, he said he left chartered accountancy so he could pick and choose nice clients, but made no mention of resigning following the £2.5million devastation he left in the wake of Premium Finance.

I left with the promise of a written investment quote I would have seven days to accept and 14 days to change my mind if I agreed.