Guilty: The witch doctor of Hampstead who took £1m from 'patients' telling them she'd give it to a shaman in the Amazon – but spent it on travel, handbags and luxury
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She posed as a glamorous shaman who could use magic powers to help her desperate clients.
In reality, Juliette D’Souza was a con artist fleecing wealthy victims whose lives were blighted by cancer, disability and fertility problems.
Police suspect the 59-year-old was the most successful female fraudster in British legal history.
They have been unable to trace all the money she stole but it is possible the haul exceeds the £4.3million stolen by a Goldman Sachs secretary ten years ago.
D’Souza bled victims of their life savings and blew the money on luxury flats, first class flights, jewellery, antique furniture and Louis Vuitton handbags.
She even persuaded one woman to have an abortion after years of heartache while trying to conceive, telling her the foetus was grossly deformed and ‘evil’.
But her lies were finally uncovered – along with a treasure trove of ‘voodoo black magic’, including an abandoned monkey and freezers stuffed with rotting meat.
Last night, her spell was broken once and for all after a jury took just an hour to convict her of 23 counts of fraud. She now faces a long jail sentence.
The verdicts end an extraordinary saga of deception. D’Souza targeted vulnerable victims who felt traditional medicine had failed them and convinced them of her supernatural powers.
Falsely boasting of celebrity clients including Princess Diana and Simon Cowell, she tricked clients into handing over six-figure sums. She even bragged she had cured comedian John Cleese’s daughter of cancer and claimed her sister worked for the Prime Minister in No10.
Investigators found some victims were so deeply ‘under her spell’ they agreed to sell their homes and borrow huge sums.
They thought the money ‘sacrifices’ were flown to Suriname in South America, where they would be hung from a magical tree in the Amazon by a shaman called ‘Pa’.
Victims: Hampstead osteopath Keith Bender, left, referred clients to D'Souza in the belief she could help. Opera singer Silvia Eaves handed over £256,000 for help with stomach problems and to invest in a clinic in Peru
But the money was instead used to fuel D’Souza’s bizarre luxury lifestyle, in which she bought designer goods she never used and rented luxury homes that were left empty.
At the heart of the scam was Hampstead osteopath Keith Bender who unwittingly referred patients to her in the genuine belief she could help.
He received payments of up to £55,000 a time into his bank account on D’Souza’s behalf and even travelled with her to the remote jungles of Suriname. Among the victims was a woman married to a globe-trotting City high-flyer who handed over £170,000 as she spent three years trying to become pregnant.
When she did unexpectedly conceive, D’Souza told her to have an abortion as the ‘baby was evil’.
The woman, now in her 30s, was so traumatised she did terminate the pregnancy and later described the fraudster as the ‘cruellest and most evil person’ she had ever met.
Another victim was the mother of a ten-year-old boy with Down’s Syndrome who was conned out of £42,000 when D’Souza claimed she could cure his behavioural problems.
Voodoo dolls: D'Souza's con was exposed when Mr Bender and property manager Keith Mcmahon grew suspicious and broke into her four flats at Willoughby Road in Hampstead, north London
Pet: Mr Bender had been visiting one flat to feed D'Souza's pet monkey, Joey, but did not dare enter the remaining flats for fear they were cursed. The money was later adopted by the TV comic Stephen Fry
Opera singer Sylvia Eaves, 82, lost almost £500,000, some of which was hauled off by D’Souza in Sainsbury’s carrier bags.
D’Souza’s web was finally untangled in 2007 as she made a series of mistakes which aroused her victims’ suspicions. She claimed to have attended St Hilliard’s College, Oxford, which does not exist and got the name of Princess Diana’s sister wrong.
The woman who had an abortion realised she had been scammed and went to Hampstead police station in north London, but said officers ‘laughed in my face’.
This left her so angry she forced her way into D’Souza’s home with the help of Mr Bender, who was paying the rent on that property, and three others. Inside they found the voodoo treasure trove – which also included drawings of an ‘evil eye’, burned photos and a brand new barrister’s wig.
The owner of the property was so shocked he called in a priest to bless it as he half-jokingly dubbed his disgraced tenant ‘Dracula’s sidekick’.
Gear: Piles of rubbish filled the flats and stacks of carrier bags from designer stores littered the rooms
Police still refused to take on the case until her crimes were laid bare by a Sunday newspaper.
Eventually investigators discovered D’Souza was a master of deception who hid behind a series of false identities.
She told victims she was an orphan born on a plane with the amniotic sac over her face – a lucky symbol. In fact she was born Maryan Persaud in Guyana. Far from having a university education, she was a former cleaner, receptionist and temp.
The capuchin monkey, named Joey, which had been smuggled into Britain from South America, was rescued by an animal sanctuary and adopted by comedian Stephen Fry.
After the verdicts at Blackfriars Crown Court, Baljit Ubhey of the Crown Prosecution Service said D’Souza, from Hampstead, was ‘a convincing and manipulative liar’.
She will be sentenced today.
