A conman who convinced several people that he was a British spy and forced them to live on the run for years at a time was sentenced to life in prison today.

Robert Hendy-Freegard, 34, spent nearly a decade acting out a bizarre and complex life of lies that deprived five women and a man of hundreds of thousands of pounds. His punishment was welcomed by his victims today, who described him as a cruel sociopath.

"We feel completely vindicated by the sentencing. This is somebody who ruins lives, he ruined my life and ruined many other people’s lives," said John Atkinson, who was a student at an agricultural college near Newport, in Wales, when he met Hendy-Freegard, a barman, in 1993.

Convinced by Hendy-Freegard that he was wanted by the IRA, Mr Atkinson spent years carrying out peculiar missions for the conman, giving him a total of £300,000 that Hendy-Freegard mainly spent on fast cars and handmade shoes.

"I have heard him described as an narcissistic sociopath and that seems to sit pretty well. It is all about himself. He will tell any lie just to get what he wants," said Mr Atkinson.

Hendy-Freegard smiled and waved to the gallery when he was sentenced to life in prison by Judge Deva Pillay this morning. He had been found guilty of kidnapping by deceit, theft and obtaining money transfer by deception on June 10.

Judge Pillay told Hendy-Freegard that he was "an egotistical and opinionated confidence trickster who has shown not a shred of remorse nor compassion for the degradation and suffering to which your victims were subjected."

Even Hendy-Freegard's barrister admitted that the crimes committed by his client, who forced three of his victims to live in a cellar and tricked another out of her marriage and reduced her to living on park benches, were unprecedented.

"This is a totally unique case. There are no precedents. We have searched, the prosecution have searched for similar types of cases and there are none in the annals of legal history. This type of case has never come up. It is a first," said Simon Draycott, QC.

Detective Sergeant Bob Brandon, of the Specialist and Economic Crime Directorate, who led the investigation that eventually trapped Hendy-Freegard agreed:

"Ordinarily when you imagine a kidnapping, you imagine someone being taken by force, thrown in the back of a car and chained to a radiator," he said. "This is a completely different type of fraud in which no force was used. Basically he conned and brainwashed his victims."

Hendy-Freegard was caught after police investigating a complaint made by one of his victims found that he had tricked Dr Kimberley Adams, an American psychologist, into running away with him.

Dr Adams's mother's boyfriend had won $100 million in an American lottery and Hendy-Freegard had convinced her that they needed some money to buy a Hebridean lighthouse from which they would monitor Russian submarines in North Sea.

Lured out of hiding in the Swiss Alps, Hendy-Freegard was arrested in a car park at Heathrow Airport in May 2003.

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