Two businessmen have each been jailed for 15 months after they conned pensioners in the York area out of money for various financial services.

Michael John Wild, 52, and Robert Henry Holly, 44, raked in more than £30,000 by telling customers Yorkshire Asset Protection (YAP) could help them ensure their affairs would be properly managed.

They offered advice on wills, powers of attorney, funeral plan purchases and property protection trusts but a jury at Leeds Crown Court heard some of the documents they provided were worthless and in other cases powers of attorney were never registered.

Salesman Wild was also convicted of misleading some clients when he saw them in their homes, claiming sometimes to be a qualified solicitor, and in others that the Government was going to change the law about property for people ending up in residential care homes.

The jury heard one customer, Lynda Madden and her husband Noel, paid £6,500 to YAP for funeral plans but after his death from blood cancer, she discovered the money had never been passed on to Golden Charter and there were no funeral plans.

She had the upset of sorting out the funeral but Holly, who had set up YAP, did later repay her.

They claimed YAP could help couples ensure their affairs would be properly managed in the event of them going into care, dying or becoming incapable of managing their finances.

But after The Press ran an expose about YAP, the business folded and scores of mostly elderly customers expressed fears to Trading Standards that they had been defrauded. More than 30 gave evidence at the trial.

Wild, of Rawdon Avenue, Tang Hall, and Holly, of South Street, Cleethorpes, were each found guilty of participating in a fraudulent business through their involvement with YAP and engaging in a commercial practice which contravened the requirements of “professional diligence” over the registration of documents.

Wild was also convicted on two charges of fraud by representing that the Government was changing the law and also falsely representing that he was a solicitor.

The court heard Wild was also in breach of a four-month suspended sentence for fraud involving a credit card, imposed in 2011.

Jason Macadam, for Wild, said he had been at an emotional low and the offences could be viewed more as incompetence than deliberate dishonesty. The trial also showed some services and value had been provided to clients.

The court heard Holly has recently had a job managing a gas training centre.

Recorder Jeremy Barnett said there had to be an immediate jail term.

Many elderly and some infirm witnesses had given evidence. He accepted the majority had received some lawful and useful advice in a complex area of law for pensioners.

On initially reading the papers in the case he thought four years in prison would be appropriate “because elderly people in the community have to be protected from rogue traders", he said.

He said courts had to ensure “elderly people receive good and proper advice when that advice is tendered in their homes about their future. A great deal of anxiety can follow for giving inappropriate advice.”

But, having considered their case, he reduced each sentence to a total of 15 months.

It was the second time Wild had been involved in a business that defrauded elderly people over wills. He and Holly previously worked for Minster Legal Associates(MLA) of York which closed in 2011 before Holly set up YAP, but his court conviction in relation to that was after the offences involving YAP.