A 32-year-old financial consultant who stole more than £2million over a four-year period has been jailed for nine years by a judge at Maidstone Crown Court.

Lee Gardiner’s job was selling investments to customers who banked at Lloyds TSB in Sevenoaks High Street where he was based. In the course of his work he became a trusted adviser to his clients. But he fleeced their accounts in order to finance his own lifestyle.

Detailed enquiries revealed that he had been moving funds electronically from customers’ accounts, mainly into his own name but also into accounts in the names of his partner and her mother.

He selected those customers who either had little financial awareness, not realising how much money they had, or did not pay much attention to what was happening with their accounts. Many were severely disabled, others elderly.

He had targeted 38 customers who, between the end of 1997 and August 2002, had their funds deprived of sums ranging from £5,000 to £180,000, and he admitted that during that period he had taken just over £2million.

He said he had spent much of the money on his hobby of buying and keeping rare birds. The birds became a distraction from domestic worries.

Gardiner, who has been living with his parents in Minster Road, Sheerness, since the sale of his property in Sevenoaks, was jailed for six years concurrent for each of the first 22 offences and a further three years, concurrent with each other but consecutive to the six years, for the final three offences.

These involved the three deposits of funds adding up to a total of £927,000, that led to his arrest in August last year.

His lawyer, David Lyons, said not only had Gardiner pleaded guilty to 24 charges of theft and one of deception, he had also asked the court to take more than 200 similar offences into consideration.

The assets had been, or would be, recovered - to the extent that, as far as the bank was concerned, there would be no loss.

The sum of £927,000 deposited last August had never actually left the bank, and the bulk of the assets were in the form of property.

There had been no element of distress to the customers, since, prior to being notified by the bank, none of them had noticed that money had been taken from them. The first they knew of it was when their funds were returned to them by the bank.

Judge Andrew Patience, QC told Gardiner: “Fraudsters like you only undermine public confidence in the banking system, which the courts cannot tolerate.”