A bogus doctor who carried out expensive fake medical procedures on people he befriended and ‘treated’ has been sentenced to four years in custody. St Albans Crown Court heard Josef Valakadis pocketed £156,000 from his fraud, and he was also sentenced for causing actual bodily harm to one client who was left with injuries following a massage.

Clients from Hertfordshire were taken in by the London-based Valakadis, also known as Josef Hoffman, and agreed to treatment after he told them that he had a doctorate in biophysics from the ‘University Of Cambridgeshire’ and that he was medically qualified.

Valadis, of Cornwall Road in central London, told clients he had worked with the Queen and a host of celebrities, all claims which were untrue.

Some of the fictitious medical procedures included treatment of what he called ‘second degree lipids’ which he said contained toxins capable of affecting people’s health in a variety of ways.

The ‘lipid’ removal treatment consisted of hard and painful massage which left marks on the skin. He told his patients they needed to have treatment to remove the toxins or they would develop cancer, strokes and heart attacks.

He also claimed to have invented products to help patients undergoing cancer treatment, that he had a secret laboratory and that he had given medical treatment to some of MI5’s spies.

He asked for intimate information about couples he was treating and asked some clients to submit a diary of their most private thoughts.

He was caught after a couple who were both clients became suspicious and provided a concoction of urine provided by various members of their family for use as a sample, which he failed to spot.

Det Con Delia Pilkington from the money laundering investigation team which forms part of a specialist regional crime squad said: “He is a fantasist. He created a fake identity and fake products and preyed on vulnerable members of society who had genuine concerns about their health.

“At no point did he take their feelings into account nor did it prey on his conscience that he was conning them out of vast sums of money, as well as the physical harm he caused to some of his clients.

“We are pleased with the sentence passed today – it highlights the severity of his crimes and I hope it can bring some closure to the victims involved.”