Psychic Sylvia Mitchell convicted of fraud after cancer lies Sylvia Mitchell, 56, has a confidential black book of famous clients including high profile Met Police officers, Teesside Crown Court heard Today she was convicted of three counts of fraud and given a three-month suspended sentence by Judge George Moorhouse In 2008 she was convicted of fleecing a friend out of money by pretending she had cancer for years Other convictions for handling and using stolen cheques and stealing from an employer date back to the 1980s By Mia De Graaf Convicted: Sylvia Mitchell once feigned cancer to trick a friend into giving her thousands of pounds A clairvoyant who has helped celebrities map their futures failed to foresee a web of disaster that would leave her with thousands of pounds in debt and a three-month suspended prison sentence. Sylvia Mitchell - who has a strictly confidential black book of famous clients, including high profile Met Police officers - eventually had to flee her home in County Durham, leaving her newly-recruited personal assistant to cat sit unaware. It is the latest in a series of tricks Mitchell, 56, has concocted to escape her trail of debts, Teesside Crown Court heard today. She has convictions for dishonesty going back to the 1980s for handling and using stolen cheques and stealing from an employer. In 2008, Mitchell - also known as Jools Marquiss, Izzy, and Fran Willow - was convicted of fleecing a friend out thousands by pretending she had cancer. A judge berated the scam, which went on for years, as 'despicable'. He said: 'It beggars the belief of right-thinking people that such meanness could be operated in such a manipulative fashion.' Today, she was found guilty of three fraud charges, and given a three-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. A high profile name in the world of clairvoyance, Mitchell has made regular appearances on satellite TV show Psychic First. She had regular orders for celebrity magazines such as OK! and Hello and the Daily Mail, and did pay some bills, the court heard. The debts she left behind in Shildon included £254 owed to a newsagents for magazines and newspapers and £1,000 to a builder for gardening work. Mitchell made a number of excuses for not paying the builder for his two days work before leaving the North-East and him 'out-of-pocket and aggrieved'. Her latest escape got her as far as Hertfordshire before she was arrested. In the meantime, her newly-appointed assistant was £455 out-of-pocket in unpaid wages and the money he had to fork out for cat food, a court was told. She scarpered from County Durham to Hertfordshire, leaving her assistant, unaware, at home with the cat Guilty: Judge George Moorhouse handed the TV psychic a suspended three-month prison sentence today The victim had applied for a vacancy in the JobCentre and when he was interviewed by Mitchell, she told of a glamorous life as a psychic to the stars. Similar to her previous court appearance, Mitchell arrived in severely poor health. In 2008, she was brought into court on a stretcher, and her barrister Ian Bradshaw, mitigating, said she was getting 12-hour daily care for a back condition. On Friday and throughout her trial in June, Mitchell was in a wheelchair, and her new lawyer, Christopher Baker, said she was in 'very poor health'. He said: 'She is not in any real fit state. Because of her health problems and because she does not accept she is guilty of these offences, there are not really any conditions that are sensible that can be imposed.