A loan shark has sunk, after he was ordered to hand over the ill-gotten gains he had received from his vulnerable customers.

Patrick Timothy Kiely, 26, charged borrower’s interest of up to 149,000% and even provided loans to children.

Kiley had been previously jailed for two years but following a hearing at Mold Crown Court, he was ordered to hand over more than £85,000 – or face having to serve extra time in prison.

A criminal investigation found that he had pocketed £250,000 from his criminal activities. Judge John Rogers QC ordered him to pay the available amount of £85,833, most of which is already in frozen bank accounts. Kiely’s Mercedes car will have to be sold to meet the bill.

It is thought that Kiely gave more than 500 people in Bangor, Caernarfon and Llangefni loans, but he broke the regulations on a wholesale basis and charged 100% interest, immediately doubling the amount lent out.

His loan agreements were meaningless, no copy was given to his customers and illegal penalty charges were imposed if a repayment was missed. An expert analysed the cash loans he had made and worked out that the APR ranged from 327% to a huge 149,000%.

The judge commented that Kiely’s business was “a wholesale and blatant disregard for the safeguards designed to protect the vulnerable from people like you. The whole approach to the business was one of exploitation of your customers.”