A CROOKED estate agent who swindled £400,000 from friends and clients is to repay only a fraction of what he stole.

Russell Baker was ordered to pay just £6,541.99 under the Proceeds of Crime Act and will be forced to sell off a pension policy to raise the money.

He has already sold land he owned at Ilsington, near Newton Abbot, to repay £123,927 of the cash he took from nine people. 

Baker was trying to prop up his failing Ashby’s estate agency business in Bovey Tracey in 2013 when he persuaded the victims to lend him money which he had no chance of repaying.

He claimed he was trying to buy out his business partner or needed short term loans to cover a cash flow bottleneck. The victims came from all around Bovey Tracey, and South Dartmoor.

In the original case in 2016 Baker, aged 60, who is now living in a caravan at Liverton, admitted nine frauds worth a total of £157,000 and was jailed for 20 months, suspended for two years, and ordered to do 160 hours unpaid community work.

He was brought back to Exeter Crown Court under the Proceeds of Crime Act and Judge Peter Ralls, QC, rubber stamped a settlement which had been agreed between his lawyers and those acting for Devon County Council’s Trading Standard Department.

He set the figure by which Baker had benefited from crime at £400,000 and the available amount as £6,541.99.

This was the value of cashing in a pension policy on Thursday, February 8 and the judge gave both parties permission to have the figure amended if stock market volatility takes it higher or lower.

The £400,000 figure does not include the £123,927 which has already been raised by the sale of land at Haytor Road, Ilsington. 

The combination of this money and the £6,541.99 means the victims will get about half their money back. 

There is a difference between the £150,000 which Baker admitted stealing at the time of his sentence and the £400,000 benefit figure arises because they are calculated differently.

The £150,000 was the total of the charges which he admitted while the £400,000 is an estimate of all his potentially criminal transactions.