Wellington, March 19 NZPA - The Auckland bank investment adviser who lived the high life for years on money stolen from clients was "nothing, if not resourceful in the way he presented the investment opportunities," the Serious Fraud Office says.

SFO director Adam Feeley, said last night that Stephen Gerard Versalko, 51, stole $17.76 million over nine years from 30 wealthy ASB Bank customers by sheltering under the banner of a bank that people trusted.

"He made it very clear that it was branded as part of the ASB, so people figured: 'I'm not dealing with dealing with an individual, I'm not dealing with an independent finance adviser, I'm dealing with a bank, and I can trust a bank," said Mr Feeley. He used bank letterheads: "It was carried out under the banner of a bank".

Versalko paid his victims back $4.6 million of their own money in "returns" on their non-existent investments, while splurging $3.4 million on two prostitutes: $800,000 to one sex worker and about $2.6 million to the other.

Yesterday in Auckland District Court Judge Christopher Field sentenced Versalko to six years imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of four years jail.

Until he was caught out last August, the fraudster was used to more plush accommodations: He bought a $3.2 million Remuera home, a $1.8 million bach in the Coromandel town of Whangapoua, and spent $500,000 on maintenance. He also spent $313,000 on wine over a seven-year period.

Mr Feeley said he did not know where Versalko's family thought his money was coming from: "I guess they thought he was doing well at work, and in one sense, he was."

The investment adviser called himself "Mr Invincible" when investigators caught up with him.

The nation's biggest employee fraud, it beats the $16.9m Otago District Health Board chief information officer Michael Andrew Swann, and business associate Kerry Harford misappropriated through fake invoices.

Judge Field put the starting point for Versalko's sentence at 10-1/2 years, the same as was used for Swann, but gave the Aucklander a bigger reduction for mitigating factors than Swann, whose final sentence was 9-1/2 years jail with a minimum non-parole period of 4-1/2 years.

Versalko's lawyer, Stuart Grieve, QC, told the court that one of the prostitutes had blackmailed his client for $1.2m.

The SFO summary of facts said Versalko began the fraud in 2000, when he had a credit card debt of about $30,000, and mainly targeted elderly women living outside of New Zealand, with high-interest tax-free investments which were supposedly government guaranteed. The clients tended not to access account online.

ASB has paid out all the investors not only the principal Versalko took from them but also all the interest they were promised.