Working as an investment adviser these days is dangerous. You risk incurring the wrath of financial crisis victims. And it doesn't matter how old they are either.

Here's an extraordinary story about a financial adviser who was kidnapped and tortured by angry pensioners after he had lost £2million ($US3.3 million) of their savings. The pensioners attacked him with a Zimmer frame outside his home, bundled into the boot of an Audi and then driven 300 miles to a place on the shores of Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria.

The adviser James Amburn, an American living in Germany, only managed to get free when he told them he could get their money if he faxed a Swiss bank. When they agreed, he scribbled a message on the bottom of the fax asking for whoever read it to call police. The cops eventually stormed the place and arrested the pensioners.

Amburn later said it took his assailants a while getting him into the car "because they ran out of breath".

The pensioners, aged between 60 and 79, have been charged with kidnapping.