Jacqui Bradley sentenced to seven years in jail

Jacqui Bradley appears at the Auckland District court. Photo / Greg Bowker

Fraudster Jacqui Bradley - who swindled 28 investors out of around $15.5 million dollars - has been sentenced to seven years and five months in jail.

The 61-year-old was found guilty of 75 fraud-related charges in the Auckland District Court last month for fleecing money from clients at her business, B'On Financial Services.

The former financial advisor ran the firm with her late husband, Mike Bradley, who was also facing charges but died last year aged 63.

Bradley told her clients - some of them close friends she had known for more than a decade - that the millions of dollars they gave her was invested securely with Macquarie Bank in Australia, or had been used to buy New Zealand Government stock.

Instead, the funds were in a Ponzi-like scheme, being used to repay other investors and fund the Bradleys' lifestyle.

Investors' money was spent on school fees to St Cuthbert's College, clothes shopping, payments on a BMW and the mortgage on a Remerua home that was valued at $4.7 million in 2008.

However, the Serious Fraud Office prosecutors who brought the case against Bradley, said the B'On scheme was unsustainable and cracks began to show when investors tried to get money out in 2008 and 2009.

Witnesses who lost money in B'On spoke of the outlandish reasons Jacqui Bradley gave if money did not turn up in their accounts when scheduled.

In one instance the delay was blamed on a Japanese banking holiday.

Even as B'On was put into liquidation in December 2009, the Bradleys were telling investors their money was safe.