An airline pilot and a crooked lawyer plotted with two pals to rake in £30 million by taking out multiple bogus mortgages on strangers’ homes, bankrupting a Woodley and Reading solicitors.

Seventy people lost their jobs as the calculated four-year conspiracy fell apart and police started a record five-year police probe.

The four conned 12 lenders by pretending to buy the homes of innocent householders who were unaware their properties were being used in the scam.

John Gilbert was a partner in Willmetts Solicitors that had branches across the Thames Valley including in Castle Street, Reading, and Headley Road, Woodley.

After a trial at Southwark Crown Court, 48-year-old Gilbert, Virgin Airways pilot Mark Entwistle, and mortgage brokers Matthew Robinson and Nicholas Pomroy were jailed for a combined total of 34 years.

Sentencing, Judge Martin Beddoe told the men: “This was very well orchestrated, professional offending over a long period of time, using and abusing the identities of others.”

“A great deal of the money was blown on your excesses as you, Mr Entwistle, vainly presented yourself to your friends as what a rich and successful man you were.”

Entwistle frittered the money away with trips to Las Vegas and buying an expensive motor boat to cruise the River Thames.

He would apply for the mortgages and 48-year-old Gilbert acted as his solicitor between 2005 and 2009. Mortgage brokers Robinson and Pomroy processed the false applications.

When the mortgages were approved, Gilbert did not tell the Land Registry about other mortgages on the property, tricking lenders into thinking they had more legal rights and collateral than they did. One home in Ascot was remortaged five times totalling £8million.

The scheme finally collapsed when the credit crunch bit in 2008 and police started an investigation when the Maidenhead branch of Willmetts reported irregularities. In the following year Willmetts Solicitors went into liquidation and Gilbert was disbarred and banned from practising. His fellow partners were saddled with the liability.

During the police investigation, it emerged that all paperwork held by Gilbert at the solicitors’ firm had been destroyed.

Entwistle, of Windsor, Berks, was jailed for 14 years after being convicted of 21 counts of conspiracy to defraud and one count of conspiracy to launder criminal property. He was acquitted on one count of conspiracy to commit corruption.

Gilbert, of Penarth, South Glamorgan, admitted 18 counts of conspiracy to defraud, with six identical counts allowed to lie on file. He was jailed for 12 years.

Robinson, 42, of Richmond-upon-Thames, Surrey, was convicted of four counts of conspiracy to defraud and one count of conspiracy to launder criminal property. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Pomroy, 58, of, Baughurst, Hants, was jailed for three years after he was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to defraud.

Detective Chief Inspector Mick Saunders said: “Fraud is not a victimless crime. Testimony was heard in court about the stress suffered by some whose homes seem to have been sold from underneath them, those who lost life savings and investments and those who lost jobs due to the callous and predatory actions of Entwistle and those who worked with him.

“We continue to investigate their financial affairs to bring Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings against them to ensure they do not benefit from their crime.”​