'Photoshop' conman Dimitri de Angelis jailed seven-and-a-half years Jailed ... conman Dimitri de Angelis / Pic: Ross Schultz Source: The Daily Telegraph CONMAN Dimitri de Angelis has been sentenced to at least seven-and-a-half years' jail for ruthlessly preying on his rich victims. District Court judge Richard Cogswell today sentenced Mr de Angelis for conning 16 investors into handing over $8.5 million. Judge Cogswell said Mr de Angelis was such a convincing conman he fooled a professor at one of the nation's top business schools into handing over his life savings. De Angelis, who didn't finish school and worked as a Qantas flight attendant, used fictitious relationships with the rich and powerful to fool investors including academic Peter Steane, who worked at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management at the time of the fraud, as well as Melbourne barrister Graeme Uren QC as well as then-deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney Marcelle Hoff. Mr Steane has delivered lectures on fraud prevention at an international conference and also lectured on fraud at the police college. Mr de Angelis has been given a head sentence of 12 years. The French-born fraudster told his gullible victims that he was rich because he had sold his company to US retail giant Wal-Mart for "hundreds of millions of dollars" . He told his victims he had access to vast amounts of money and that he knew and was friends with many important people including former Prime Minister's John and Janette Howard and Kevin Rudd as well as gambling mogul James Packer and his late father Kerry. Mr de Angelis used photoshop in an attempt to show he was friends with international politicians, religious figures and business-people. In one case he removed Nelson Mandela from a photo with former US President Bill Clinton and replace himself in the photograph. He did the same with photos of the Pope and the Dalai Lama. The investors he conned lost every cent they gave him, naively believing they were investing in Mr de Angelis's recording label, Emporium Music. But it was all a giant lie. Judge Cogswell said Mr de Angelis frittered the money away on hiring Ferrari's, Rolls Royce's and Bentley's to impress his victims, as well as by living large in five star hotels and with extravagant music launch parties. He told his victims he had already made a fortune selling his company to Walmart, and boasted that James Packer had invested in the music business - but in reality he was broke. He pretended he was an international jet-setter and invited the victims to stay at ``his" weekenders at Palm Beach, north of Sydney and Wombarra on the NSW south coast and on ``his" yacht. It was a lie, they were all rented. Jusdge Cogswell said psychiatrist Stephen Allnut found Mr de Angelis had a narcissistic personality disorder. His victims include Anne Keating, sister of former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who lost $100,000, Melbourne solicitor Jayne Gregory who lost $1million and her partner, Graeme Uren QC who lost $20,000. Peter Steane lost $195,000, Kevin Winward and Jenny Winward lost $2.8 million, John and Marcelle Hoff lost $1million, millionaire builder Assunta Pellicano lost $950,000, Rex Growden $1.3 million, Nicky Horkings $125,000, Pyrmont cafe owner Stuart Fish $780,000, Caroline Thompson $90,000, Macquarie university student Dev Mookerjee $50,000, Sydney limousine company owner Andrew Achilleos $130,000 and Perth woman Lorraine Velichkovich $330,000.