EXCLUSIVE | 

Disgraced financial adviser who swindled €210k from clients walks free after two years

Fraudster out of prison after serving less than half of his sentence

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A disgraced financial adviser who swindled €210,000 from clients is free from prison after serving less than half of a five-year sentence.

Mervyn Tanner (48), lost an appeal against the length of his sentence last October, but has since walked free from Shelton Abbey prison.

When contacted by the Sunday World this week the Cork native played down the seriousness of his crimes and said he thought “it was odd” an interest was shown.

“Not sure why you’d have that level of interest in such a case. It seems to be an odd call to getting, if you don’t mind,” he said.

Asked if he is now working and if there was any prospect of his victims being repaid, he said: “I’m not at liberty to say really. I’m not sure what you are trying to achieve with the phone call.”

Trusted inmates at Shelton open prison are allowed to leave to go to work or classes every day and some are given full-time temporary release while their sentences remain in force.

Based in Mallow, Co Cork, Tanner took the cash from people who had come to him for financial advice in what a judge described as “a disgraceful breach of trust”.

Tanner continued to work as an adviser despite having had his licence to act as a mortgage provider revoked in 2014.

He was arrested by appointment in 2018 when one of his own employees raised the alarm after also being defrauded of money she had inherited.

The woman had come into €200,000 following the death of her brother in 2010 and asked Tanner about using it to pay off the mortgage she had got through him.

But he told her it would be better to invest the cash and persuaded her she would get a good return from various policies.

She trusted him and had no reason to doubt his advice, but after he offered her a part-time job in 2013 she started to notice “all was not right”.

She realised a lot of his clients were losing money and asked him about her investment, which he promised to pay back.

During his 2021 trial it was heard that he paid the woman small monthly instalments but that she was still at a loss of more than €120,000.

In a victim impact statement, the woman said what Tanner did was a “betrayal of her brother’s memory”.

“Mr Tanner took advantage of me. I was taken for a fool. I felt ashamed and depressed. I suffer every day. I had everything taken from me,” she said.

Cork Circuit Criminal Court heard how Tanner was “robbing from Peter to pay Paul” after he set up a business which lent money to people who would struggle to get a loan elsewhere.

He pleaded guilty to several sample counts of fraud and forging documents between November 2010 to December 2015.

Tanner produced bogus bank statements in a bid to pretend all was well with the business.

One man who invested in a scheme ended up losing over €40,000, while a doctor lost €43,000 and another woman lost €5,000.

It was heard that at one point Tanner ran a business which had up to 30 employees, but he struggled with the collapse of the Celtic Tiger and was working on his own in Mallow.