A fraudster, a French dream home, and a living nightmare

Francis de Gaetan Rutherford called them the "dreamers" – Britons who emptied their bank accounts for a new life of vineyards and tumbledown chateaux, and ended up penniless at his hands.

The 60-year-old estate agent, who despite his exotic surname was known to his clients as "Frank", was last night starting an 18-month jail term for defrauding clients of the proceeds from the sale of their French homes.

Armed with a charming manner, fluent French and 30 years' experience in selling property, the Oxford graduate was the owner of the largest estate agent in Britain dealing in houses in France.

The business, which variously styled itself "Rutherfords – The French Agents" and "Rutherfords All France", was at the top of a booming industry now worth £2.5bn a year.

As well as furnishing his customers with farmhouses and cottages from rural Normandy to the Dordogne, Rutherford also ran a service helping ex-pat Britons who wanted to leave France to sell up.

Blackfriars Crown Court heard yesterday that between January 1996 and November 1998 the estate agent used this scheme to deprive six couples of £156,000 from the sale of their homes.

Sentencing him after he pleaded guilty to a single charge of fraudulent trading, Judge Patricia Knowles said: "This is a tragic case from every point of view.

"It's tragic to have a man standing in the dock with the past and reputation that you had hitherto. It's tragic from the point of view of the people that have lost money."

Among them were Richard and Anne Harvey, a couple from Kent who had retired in 1993 to Les Petits Feux – two farmhouses and an orchard in the rolling Normandy countryside. "It was a little paradise," Mrs Harvey said. "It was bought using inheritance money from my aunt. Every penny was used."

When Richard, 71, fell ill with cancer two years later and Anne's mother became terminally ill, the couple were forced to sell up and head back to their previous home town of Tunbridge Wells.

To overcome the difficulties of French bureaucracy, the couple enlisted the services of Rutherford to complete the sale of Les Petits Feux to a couple from Suffolk for £42,000.

They never saw the money and were left homeless when they returned to Britain, until a housing association agreed to give them accommodation while Richard received hospital treatment.

Mrs Harvey said: "I was made homeless by this man when my husband had cancer and my mother was dying. It was a most appalling shock.

"I have longed to see him behind bars because I know that he's going to do it again. He's a very arrogant man. He took every penny of ours."

For Rutherford, whose mother is French, the Harveys and his other victims were opportunities to keep his business afloat at a time when it was losing money badly.

The court heard that his losses – to the tune of some £300,000 – were incurred after he himself fell victim to a scam run by Nigerian criminals.

Prior to his own financial troubles, Rutherford, who ran his business from plush offices in Fulham, west London, appeared in the property pages of national newspapers as a pundit on the pitfalls of buying abroad. His status as an authority on the intricacies of Gallic red tape was underlined by his book, French Housing, Laws and Taxes.

Asked by one newspaper about Britons seeking to return to the UK, he labelled them "dreamers". He added: "Some people went to live in France with their eyes closed. They hardly spoke the language, they didn't know what to expect. One wonders what they were doing here."

An estimated 25,000 Britons will this year buy a home in France, making Anglo-French property an enormous business. Those in the industry who knew Rutherford said he was a victim of his own conceit.

According to Dick Schrader, the managing director of French Property News, Rutherford felt that the trade owed him a living.

"Frank has a element of arrogance about him," he said. "He felt he was better than other companies in the market. He had been around for longer than almost anyone so he thought he knew everything."

Rutherford, who was disqualified yesterday from acting as a company director for six years, arranged for the proceeds of the sale of his clients' houses to be paid directly into his bank account. Some were told that this would enable them to get a better exchange rate from his account in the Channel Islands.

The court was told that when they asked for their money, the estate agent would present a blizzard of excuses and promises to conceal the fact that the money had disappeared into the "black hole of his finances" as he tried to cover up his losses.

Judge Knowles said she accepted that Rutherford had been trying to save his business rather than seeking personal gain.

For Brian McHugh, 68, a retired insurance executive from Fetcham, Surrey, that was of little comfort. He lost £37,000 in 1998 when he and his wife Helen, 67, decided to use Rutherford, already a bankrupt, to help sell their apartment in the Chateau de Muzac, a mansion near the town of Brive la Gaillarde in the Lot department, south-west France.

Mr McHugh said last night: "He is a very cold person who has told so many lies to so many people over the years. I have absolutely no pity for him."