A SWINDON-based financial advisor who plundered £1m from a Welsh miners' pension fund is facing a jail sentence.

The coal workers had employed Colin Stanton to set up a fund after they clubbed together to buy the last remaining deep mine in Wales.

It was their intention that the investment should provide pensions for the miners when they retired but colliery officials were aghast to discover that almost £1m they expected had disappeared and so had Stanton.

The 58-year-old pensions' expert rocked backwards and forwards at Reading Crown Court yesterday as the jury con-victed him of the heist.

Judge Christopher Critchlow told him the matters were serious and custody would be a likely outcome.

He adjourned sentencing to December 20 for pre-sentence reports to be prepared.

Stanton, who traded from his office, Grosvenor Employee Benefits in Swindon and now lives in Burnham, Bucks, denied four charges of evading liability by deception between 1995 and 2000.