A FRAUDSTER turned financial advisor has admitted using high-pressure sales tactics on customers of a firm that purported to help them write their wills.

Michael John Wild, 49, admitted falsely telling customers of Minster Legal Associates LLP between January and November 2011 that products he offered were only available for a very limited period and only on very limited terms.

For part of that time, he was awaiting sentence for stealing his then landlord’s credit card and running up debts of more than £10,000 on it as he lived the high life.

Landlord Paul Hardiment only found out about the fraud against him when he started a county court case against Wild to get months of rent arrears and visited his property.

He found a £62,500 Jaguar with a personalised number plate on the driveway and a stack of bills and bank demands for payment in his own name inside the house.

Wild also acted as consultant for Yorkshire Asset Protection, a financial services firm offering funeral plans, which closed earlier this year and which is being investigated by York trading standards.

Wild’s latest crimes were uncovered by York trading standards after they received a series of complaints from elderly and other customers of Minster Legal Associates over the way it had carried out business worth more than £18,000. The limited liability partnership, formed in 2010, went into liquidation in 2012.

Joint partners of Minster Legal Associates Samuel Tony Dodds, 32, of The Green, Acomb, and Gary Jones, 32, of Curzon Terrace, York, each admitted an offence of poor trading diligence in April this year.

Wild, of Oxford House, Lowther Terrace, York, pleaded guilty at York Crown Court to engaging in unfair commercial practices on the basis he genuinely did not know that the products were available for longer than he said they were, but accepted he should have checked his claims more thoroughly.

His case was adjourned for probation officers to prepare a pre-sentence report on him and he was released on bail. All three will be sentenced together at a date to be arranged.

In August 2011, York Crown Court heard that Mr Hardiment owned and used to live in a house in Bishopthorpe Road before renting it out to Wild.

Barclays Bank sent the credit card in Mr Hardiment’s name unsolicited to the address and Wild used it to spend more than £10,000 between September and December 2010, including buying new tyres for his girlfriend’s Audi.

Wild’s barrister, Nicholas Barker, claimed he only used the landlord’s credit card to buy “mundane” items such as food because he was in debt.

But the Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, rejected the claims, saying the card had been used to support “high living”.

York Crown Court heard in August 2011 that since his arrest for theft and fraud, Wild had got employment as a financial advisor, advising elderly people on trust laws and how to mitigate inheritance tax.