The ex-trader pleaded guilty to a number of charges including fraudulent trading and acting as a director of a company while bankrupt.
He was found to have used the money of his investors to fund a lavish lifestyle which included cars, jewellery and an executive box at Tottenham Hotspur’s football ground.
Judge Christopher Hardy described the case as one of the “most serious ... of this type I've had to deal with in this court".
“You were not dealing with big institutions, but ordinary hard-working men and women and their families who trusted you to invest their hard-earned life savings, pensions and inheritance and the like, and for them in reality all is likely to have been lost," he told the trader.
The behaviour of the convicted fraudster was uncovered when he went to the authorities to complain of being threatened by angry investors.