"Funds like this don’t run without reports being sent back to independent directors and they were being sent, saying solicitors were winning cases, so the fund grew."
The company collapsed in August 2012 after it featured in an article in 'Offshore Alert', taking most of the investor’s cash with it.
"Although £25mn was retraced, the costs incurred in all the litigation and tracing meant that of all the money, only £1mn was recovered. So the investors effectively lost everything", the prosecutor said.
Schools was struck off as a solicitor back in 2014 for misconduct.
Before he became involved in Axiom, he ran a Lancaster-based personal injury firm called Life Repair Group, previously called The Compensation Group, when it collapsed in 2003.
The jury reached a verdict on Schools after 28 hours' deliberation.
Schools, of Sedbergh, Cumbria, denied three counts of fraudulent trading, one count of fraud and one count of transferring criminal property but was found guilty by a unanimous jury verdict.
He was sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison and disqualified from being a company director for 15 years. Schools appeared shell-shocked as the sentence was announced and he was led to the cells.
Lisa Osofsky, director, Serious Fraud Office, said: "Schools deliberately abused his position of trust to enrich himself. Through a complex web of lies, he attempted to hide his fraudulent activity, while spending other people’s hard-earned money."
Eddie Beaver is based at Southwark Crown Court
