AN ESTATE agent who swindled thousands of pounds from elderly couples in a French home-buying deception was jailed yesterday for 18 months.

Francis de Gaetan Rutherford, 64, an Oxford graduate, appeared before Blackfriars Crown Court in London after admitting at an earlier hearing stealing more than £150,000 from six couples between 1996 and 1998. The property expert, who wrote a book on the pitfalls of buying property abroad, acted as an agent and stakeholder for Britons wanting to buy or sell homes in France.

He would persuade the seller or purchaser to transfer the full amount of the sale into his bank accounts and then pocket the funds, often duping his victims out of their nest-eggs.

Rutherford, of Earls Court, West London, said that he did not set out to steal the money but was desperate to save his businesses because he himself had been the victim of a Nigerian investment scam.

Judge Patricia Knowles told him his conduct had been appalling, but accepted his claim that he had not been seeking personal gain. “It’s tragic to have a man standing in the dock with the past and reputation that you had hitherto,” she said. Rutherford is to serve nine months in prison with the rest suspended. He is to be disqualified from acting as a company director for six years.

His victims who lost most were couples who, after selling their houses, would find that although their properties had been legally transferred, the money had disappeared.

Rutherford evaded questions about what had happened to his clients’ money, citing excuses that ranged from legal problems in France to having placed amounts in an overseas bank account to gain a better rate of interest. He also moved money between clients to cover his tracks.

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