A dishonest wine broker who benefited by £488,716 from defrauding investors has been ordered to pay back just £25,000.

Harry Mosley’s company preyed on mostly elderly people, many of whom have been left struggling financially.

A judge made a compensation order for £25,000 for the 27-year-old’s 15 victims after hearing it was the amount available in realisable assets.

Mosley, formerly of Bradbourne Vale Road, Sevenoaks, was jailed for four years and four months in March 2017 after he changed his not guilty pleas to guilty to two offences of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation part-way through his trial.

He had admitted two other fraud conspiracy charges on “a limited basis”.

Maidstone Crown Court heard Mosley and others cold-called customers on behalf of his company Optimum Fine Wine and cheated them out of portfolios or large amounts of cash.

They had been promised profit in return for buying, swapping or selling wine through the company.

But the clients received little or no money from sales of their own wine collections, and wine they bought or swapped never materialised.

Instead, director Mosley was said to have “cut and run” and spent the money on high living.

He splashed around abut £100,000 at bars, restaurants and hotels and bought luxury goods and designer clothes.

Mosley, now of Westerham Road, Keston, also spent £57,000 on spread betting, took a holiday in Dubai and gave his girlfriend £23,320. He paid himself £112,000 and sold a luxury Bentley car.

One customer, aged 84, handed over £205,460 for wine to be purchased and then held in warehouse storage at London City Bond, but none was bought and no money was refunded.

The frauds were committed between September 2012 and May 2014.

Optimum Fine Wine was set up in September 2012 by Mosley helped by a £61,000 loan from his parents.

It was first based in Croydon, Surrey, and then moved to Wellington House in Church Road, Tunbridge Wells.

Judge Charles Macdonald QC said when passing sentence: “This was a sustained, planned multiple victim fraud, also a heartless and cruel one which greatly damaged a number of lives.”

Mosley, who has been in an open prison in preparation for his release in about two months, was given three months to pay the £25,000 or serve a further eight months in default.

Judge Macdonald ordered that each victim should receive a “dividend” which equates to 5.89 per cent.

Mosley’s co-accused Bradley Deadman, 23, of Lodge Road, Tonbridge, and Lewis Hearson, 22, of Dowgate Close, Tonbridge, denied four charges of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and were acquitted by the jury.