A British witch doctor who conned her 'patients' out of £1million to become one of the most prolific con-women in history has been jailed for 10 years.
Juliette D'Souza, 59, persuaded 11 clients to hand over their life savings - which she insisted would be hung from a magic tree in the Amazon as a sacrifice.
Instead she spent the cash on first class flights, antique furniture and a £3,000 Hermes handbag.
Bizarrely, she would buy designer goods she never used and rent luxury homes which she never visited.
Today D'Souza was jailed for 10 years at Blackfriars Crown Court, where police claimed she was every bit as dangerous as a violent criminal.
Judge Ian Karsten QC said she had cast a 'spell' over her victims - who had cancer, disabilities, sick relatives, job worries and fertility problems - persuading them to hand over the money or face 'terrifying' consequences including the death of their loved ones.
A jury took just an hour to convict her of 23 counts of fraud and obtaining property by deception, spanning 12 years from 1998 to 2010.
The self-proclaimed healer said she had helped cure John Cleese’s daughter of cancer, boasted of knowing Princess Diana and claimed she could introduce a young singer to Simon Cowell.
Advertising her services in Tatler magazine, she charged just £35 for a consultation but then demanded huge sums to be used as the 'sacrifices' in Suriname, South America.
There she claimed two other shamans would perform rituals around the money before it was sent back with all the victims' problems resolved - but the money was never returned.
In one especially horrifying case, a client handed over £176,000 in a desperate bid to fall pregnant.
When she finally conceived, D'Souza told her to have an abortion because her foetus would be grossly deformed and ‘evil’.
Her lies were finally uncovered, along with ‘voodoo black magic’ which included freezers stuffed with rotting meat and an abandoned capuchin monkey which was later adopted by Stephen Fry.
Judge Karsten told her today: 'It is the worst case of confidence fraud I have ever had to deal with or indeed that I have ever heard of.
'The most serious aspect of this case is that you wrecked the lives of a number of your victims and you have done it out of pure greed.
'You told a number of victims the money would be returned. The reality, as it has emerged, is that you didn’t send any of this money to South America. You used the cash for your own purposes.
'You cheated each and every one of these victims. You were able to exercise a considerable influence and indeed a spell over these victims.'
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