A date has been set for the sentencing of two people charged in connection with a pension fraud case, whereby savers were persuaded to transfer £13.6m into fraudulent pension schemes.

Alan Barratt, 62, of Essex and Susan Dalton, 66, of Lancashire will appear at Southwark Crown Court to be sentenced on 22 April.

The case, which is being prosecuted by The Pensions Regulator (TPR), relates to 243 people being persuaded to transfer their pension savings in to 10 schemes controlled by Barratt and Dalton between 2012 and 2014.

Those funds were then dissipated by the defendants and almost all of the savings were lost.

Both Barratt and Dalton have admitted the charges of fraud by abuse of position, arising from their roles as trustees of pension schemes.

Last year, Barratt was extradited to the UK in connection with the case, with this being the first time that TPR worked with the police on the extradition of a suspect.

Although Dalton pleaded guilty in the defendants' first appearance in court in April 2021, Barratt had pleaded not guilty on that occasion.

However, Barratt changed his plea to guilty at a subsequent hearing in January 2022.

A third defendant, Julian Hanson, 57, of West Yorkshire had appeared in court at the previous hearings and gave no indication of a plea and pleaded not guilty, respectively.

A verdict of not guilty was formally entered by the court for Hanson.

TPR said that while it remained “satisfied” that the evidential test continues to be met in the case of Hanson, after “careful consideration” it had determined it was no longer in the public interest to proceed with the case against him.

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