Reginald Gill, 68, of Poole. Dorset, who described himself as a wellness practitioner, sold a terminally ill cancer patient an electronic device that he said would reverse the illness.

Stephen Hall, who was suffering from inoperable pancreatic cancer, spent the last weeks of his life trying to stick to a bizarre eating schedule prescribed by Gill. He had also stopped taking his morphine on Gill’s instructions.

Bournemouth Crown Court was told that Gill sold Mr Hall an IFAS High Frequency Therapy device for £2,500 after he had bought it for less than £200.

Gill claimed that the device, which works on the same principle as a car ignition coil, could kill off cancer cells, but the court was told that the machine’s manufacturers made no such claims and that it was intended for treatment of relatively mild conditions such as insomnia and hair loss.

The court was told that Gill advised Mr Hall not to have chemotherapy, saying he would “go home in a box” if he did. Instead he charged him £75 for a series of treatment sessions at his home. Later he agreed to sell Mr Hall the machine so that the dying man could use it at his own home.

Mr Hall, a professional singer and voice coach from Flintshire, North Wales, died in June last year at the age of 43, ten weeks after incurable cancer of the pancreas was diagnosed.

Speaking outside court, Mr Hall’s mother, Sheila Cracknell, said yesterday that her son had even stopped taking morphine on the instructions of Gill. “The verdict today should go a long way towards protecting the sick and the terminally ill who in good faith go to bogus practitioners who make false claims,” she said. “Stephen was a hostage to the treatment that the so-called clinic advocated, so depriving him of any sense of normality in the last weeks of his life.

“I tried to look at this case as a win-win situation — if he was guilty then we had won, and if he was not, then he had found a miracle cure for cancer. I just wanted to rattle his cage, to force him to stop practising. When I reported him, I never dreamt it would escalate this far.

“People like Gill give the alternative therapy world a bad name. He saw that machine and thought he was on to a winner. When Stephen first told me about the treatment I was sceptical but as time went on I became more angry. We carried on using the machine because it gave Stephen hope. But I told Gill that once my son was dead I would be on his doorstep, and I was.”

The court was told that after the first two-hour treatment with Mr Hall had ended, Gill told him: “I’ve got it. I’ve killed the bad cells; it’s just the pancreas that needs more work.” Mr Hall was so convinced that the machine was helping his condition that he arranged for four further sessions with Gill and decided to purchase the briefcase-size device rather than continue with chemotherapy.

Gill, who claims on his business card to have successfully reversed all forms of cancer, sold him the Australian-made IFAS machine for £2,500.

But despite twice-daily sessions, Mr Hall’s health steadily deteriorated. He spent the last weeks of his life obsessively trying to stick to a bizarre eating schedule that Gill had set him.

Gill’s crime was uncovered after Mr Hall’s mother complained to trading standards officers in Poole, who went to investigate his clinic.

The Recorder, Lorraine Morgan, told Gill that he faced imprisonment when he is sentenced in January. She said: “I warn you that I do have custody in mind for your sentence.”

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