The crimes of a bogus lawyer who duped ‘desperate and vulnerable victims’ into thinking he was a bona fide legal professional have been highlighted in a new documentary series.
Giovanni di Stefano, 57, became known as the Devil’s Advocate for taking on ‘unwinnable’ cases with a client list including road rage killer Kenneth Noye and timeshare fraudster John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer.
Despite no legal training, the fraudster managed to win some of his cases. But his high-flying legal career was brought to an abrupt end when he was convicted of 25 charges including deception, fraud and money laundering between 2001 and 2011.
New three-part documentary series Devil’s Advocate: The Mostly True Story of Giovanni di Stefano is set to be released on Sky Documentaries on 15 February at 9pm and will explore Giovanni’s crimes.
Director Sam Hobkinson told The Telegraph: ‘What he did very cleverly was, he told lies that were very close to the truth…
‘Everyone had their questions about this guy – he turns up, he wins cases, but he has no background.
‘People had questions about his legal credentials yet nothing happened.’
The crimes of Giovanni di Stefano, 57, who duped ‘desperate and vulnerable victims’ into thinking he was a bona fide legal professional have been highlighted in a new documentary series set to air on Sky
Giovanni was born in the small town of Petrella Tifernina in central Italy, but moved to the UK as a boy and went to school in Wollaston, Northamptonshire.
The family moved into a council house in Irchester and Giovanni began calling himself John after he was bullied at school about his nationality.
However his teachers and classmates remembered him as a showman who would try to win popularity with humour.
After leaving school, he worked as a waiter at London’s Savoy Hotel before moving Cambridge where he found a job as a lab technician.
He went on to marry his first wife Tanja in 1978, with whom he fathered four children: Michael, now 42, Antony, 41, Anna Meri, 40, and Milan, 39.
It was then he began to exaggerate the truth, claiming he had a PhD from Cambridge University in law and saying he had earned a £200 million fortune by importing videotapes from Hong Kong.
He became known as the Devil’s Advocate for taking on ‘unwinnable’ cases with a client list including road rage killer Kenneth Noye and timeshare fraudster John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer (pictured, he claimed to have represented Saddam Hussein and Ian Brady)
However he was jailed for five years for fraud in March 1986 and was banned from being a company director after trying to steal tens of thousands of pounds through cheques drawn on imaginary banks.
His appeal was dismissed in January 1987 when Lord Justice Stephen Brown concluded his trial had ‘revealed a very deep and wide measure of fraudulent behaviour.’
After his release, he moved to California and then the Balkans, where he befriended Slobodan Milošević, then president of Serbia and Zeljko Ražnatović.
He met his second wife Mirjana, with whom he fathered another son, Gianni before returning to England in 1999.
Di Stefano, a British-Italian who speaks English with a cockney accent, was dubbed the Devil’s Advocate for his role defending some of the world’s most notorious villains.
The 57-year-old conned clients out of millions of pounds by setting himself up as a lawyer when he had no legal qualifications and was not registered to work as a lawyer in Italy or the UK.
He used the Italian word ‘avvocato’ on business cards, letterheads and identification documents to give clients – and the judiciary – the impression he was an advocate.
Gerome Lynch QC, who worked with the conman on around 10 cases in the noughties, said there were rumours circulating that he didn’t have the right qualifications.
However he insisted that he was ‘as good a lawyer as you could get’.
In 1999 he tried to buy Dundee Football Club, but the deal collapsed amid a protest from the fans when they discovered his links to Arkan.
And two years later he tried to win a seat on the board at Norwich City, but his bid was dismissed by majority shareholder Delia Smith.
He did in fact win some cases, overturning a manslaughter conviction against Nicholas van Hoogstraten in 2002 and getting him released from prison.
He appeared in the 2003 BBC documentary called Notorious, claiming that Hitler would never have been convicted of killing Jews.
Meanwhile he spoke of his friendship with Saddam Hussein, saying: ‘I had about three meetings with Saddam and found him to be a very amenable person.
‘He spoke reasonable English, liked a drink… and talked about his children. He was a normal, average, everyday man.
‘I took it as a compliment when I learnt from his wife that he wanted me on his defence team.’
In 2003, Di Stefano secured the release of John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer from prison on a technicality, with only a fine of £33million for timeshare fraud, which Palmer later avoided paying.
He was one of several lawyers who worked for Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein before the dictator was executed in December 2006.
Di Stefano has claimed to have represent dozens of public hate figures.
The list includes convicted time-share fraudster John ‘Goldfinger’ Palma, Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs, mass murderers Jeremy Bamber and Dr Shipman, and Charles Bronson, dubbed Britain’s most violent prisoner.
Di Stefano was close friends with Serbian warlord Željko Ražnatović, aka Arkan, before his assassination.
Asked once why he chose to defend such unsavoury characters he replied: ‘We do not defend Snow White, who has committed no offence, unless she is with the seven perverts. In which case, she will need our services.’
However, some clients began complaining that they had paid him hundreds of thousands of pounds for work which had never materialised.
Police arrested him in 2011 in Majorca over multiple fraud allegations.
However he told officers on the flight back to the UK that he was a long-standing MI6 agent which made him immune to prosecution.
Meanwhile he also claimed his father had been murdered in 2006 by British security services, in part as revenge for having filed legal papers against Tony Blair on behalf of Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s foreign minister.
In March 2013, di Stefano, pleaded guilty to another two counts of fraud and a further three counts were ordered to lie on file at London’s Southwark Crown Court.
In 1999 he tried to buy Dundee Football Club, but the deal collapsed amid a protest from the fans when they discovered his links to Arkan (pictured)
As he stepped out of the dock after hearing his sentence, di Stefano told the judge in a loud voice: ‘I am obliged, my Lord’.
During the trial, di Stefano told of his links to Robert Mugabe, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and his ‘friendship’ with the daughter of Slobodan Milosevic.
The court was shown a 2004 BBC documentary in which he described Saddam as a ‘nice guy’ and boasted of being asked to defend killers such as Jeremy Bamber, Harold Shipman, Kenneth Noye and Linda Calvey.
Judge Alistair McCreath, the Recorder of Westminster, noted there were many offences over significant periods of time.
He said the fact that the victims, which included a disabled man seeking damages for the loss of an arm, were all ‘desperate and vulnerable’ and faced losses which were not just financial but also included the ‘raising and dashing of false hope’ were aggravating factors.
Pop guru Jonathan King, who was convicted of a series of sexual assaults on teenage boys, with his lawyer di Stefano
The judge told di Stefano: ‘I recognise that you did not actively seek out those whom you defrauded. They came to you. You did not approach them but there is more than one kind of predator.
‘Some predators hunt down their victims, others lie in wait for them.
‘Your victims in this case were all desperate people and people who, because of their desperation, were vulnerable.’
The judge also noted that, while this case is about money, ‘it is also about something different and great – it is about the real distress you caused to so many people’.
‘You had no regard for them nor for their anguish,’ he said. ‘Your only concern was to line your own pockets.’
Prosecutor David Aaronberg QC told the jury that di Stefano had gained fame for handling clients ‘whose cases others considered unwinnable or too difficult to defend’.
The harm that di Stefano inflicted was ‘in financial terms alone high’, said the judge.
Di Stefano acted for Patrick ‘Dutchy’ Holland, a career Irish criminal, best known for being the first person accused of killing Irish investigative journalist Veronica Guerin, which he denied until his death
But he added: ‘In terms of emotional harm, it was much greater – the building of false hopes, always and inevitably dashed, followed by years of misery and frustration as they tried to recover what you had stolen and in the end were forced to come to terms with their financial loss.’
The judge said di Stefano had ‘lied’ to his victims about what he was capable of and who he was.
His crimes were ‘planned and persistent’ and some of his attempts to defend his behaviour in court amounted to ‘breathtaking cynicism’, the judge noted.
Di Stefano, of North Stream, Marshside, Canterbury, Kent, was found guilty of nine counts of obtaining a money transfer by deception, eight counts of fraud, three counts of acquiring criminal property, two counts of using a false instrument, one count of attempting to obtain a money transfer by deception, one count of obtaining property by deception and one count of using criminal property.
He also pleaded guilty to stealing £150,000 compensation that should have gone to a man who had lost an arm in a car crash.
The judge said di Stefano had ‘lied’ to his victims about what he was capable of and who he was
The bogus lawyer was sentenced to 22 years in prison, though next year he will become eligible for release
The money was due as part of an insurance policy but di Stefano had it paid in to his business account and ‘duly stole it’.
The court was told it was a ‘wicked’ crime and is one which ‘stands in a league of its own’.
The bogus lawyer also admitted defrauding engineer David Brown and his family of £160,000 including the £75,000 life savings of his partner’s mother. This case also involved £20,000 costs which were not paid out.
Due to the ‘utterly wrong’ advice that di Stefano gave him – ‘to protect your own position’ – he lost his home and his job.
He was sentenced to 22 years in prison, though next year he will become eligible for release.
Devil’s Advocate: The Mostly True Story of Giovanni di Stefano will be available to watch on Sky Documentaries on 15 February at 9pm
Credit: Source link
