He lived in a French manor house and drove around the Dordogne in vintage cars. Among his previous girlfriends, he claimed, was the fashion designer Karen Millen. When he promised fellow Britons a safe investment, few doubted his word.

Yesterday Warren Templeton went on trial in France accused of swindling eight people out of a total of almost €2 million (£1.7 million).

Bordeaux Criminal Court was told that he posed as a financial consultant selling funds offering annual interest of 15 per cent and guaranteed by the French bank Société Générale.

His alleged victims, most of them elderly, trusted him with their savings and handed over cheques written out to the bank between 2001 and 2004, according to French investigators.

Anne-Marie Laprie, the prosecutor, called for Mr Templeton to be jailed for three years, saying: “He is a conman who swindled his compatriots out of their savings.”

Mr Templeton, 54, countersigned the cheques and deposited the money in his own account, leaving some of the victims destitute, the court heard.

Suave and elegant — and often claiming that he resembled Hugh Grant, the actor — he bought a chateau in the village of Coux-et-Bigarroque as well as an Aston Martin DB7 and a Jaguar XK120.

He is said to have had a luxury yacht moored in Marbella and was seen by the expatriates he befriended as a golden boy who had moved to the Dordogne to get away from the frenzy of the City.

His neighbours say they had no idea that he had in fact arrived in France in 1999 at the wheel of an old Renault Clio after serving 14 months in jail in Britain. In 1996 he was found guilty of obtaining property by deception, perverting the course of justice and forgery at Bournemouth Crown Court.

French detectives say that Mr Templeton — who was born Graham Briggs but changed his name in 1997 — left school at the age of 16 and began work two years later as a butcher.

Julie Blythe, his former wife, says he told her he was a Concorde pilot when they first met in the mid-1990s and showed her the uniform hanging in his cupboard. By the time she had discovered there was no truth to the story, she says, he had taken £25,000 from her bank account.

In 2003 Mr Templeton met the founder of the Karen Millen fashion empire, and acquaintances say he sought to win Ms Millen’s friendship. He told a French regional daily that they had been close, although Ms Millen has denied suggestions that she showered him with gifts.

French police say that at least 42 people bought into the funds that Mr Templeton claimed to be selling. Eight have filed a formal legal complaint against him, enabling them to be represented by lawyers at the trial. The money they say they lost comes to €1,988,265 (£1.72 million).

Among them is William Sarginson, an 87-year-old Briton who lives in the Dordogne. He trusted Mr Templeton with £110,000.

“I have very little hope of getting it back,” he told The Times, adding that he was also taking legal action against Société Générale. “I wrote out cheques to the bank and they allowed this man to put them in his account. I’m suing them for negligence. I think the French authorities have been lax.”

Another alleged victim, Elizabeth Dickinson, an 86-year-old American, gave Mr Templeton three cheques worth a total of €650,000 to invest.

Maître Alexandre Novion, Mr Templeton’s lawyer, said the defendant had genuinely worked as a financial consultant “and made a lot of money for his rich English clients in the Dordogne”. But he had been “caught in a tempting spiral” when he realised that he could deposit cheques written out to Société Générale in his own account.

Mr Templeton’s manor and other possessions were auctioned in France for a total of €1.7 million on the order of officials to pay his outstanding taxes.

The court is expected to give its judgment at a later date.

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