AN international conman has been ordered to repay £5.8-million or face having seven years added to his jail sentence.

Joseph Birch used his horse racing business at Hatherleigh as cover for a series of massive confidence tricks which read like scripts from the Hollywood movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

He claimed to be a former Royal Marine, a special services operative, a peer and a knight and swindled rich Americans by claiming that his investment schemes had billions of dollars in the bank. He told one victim he had been involved in a secret attempt to rescue hostage Terry Waite from Beirut and others that he had served in Iraq but his work was so secret that it would never be acknowledged by the Pentagon.

He transferred £1.87-million to a bank in Liechtenstein and rented safety deposit boxes in Zurich where he is thought to have stashed cash or valuables.

Birch lived a life of luxury with his wife Grit at his Higher Lowton Farm stables until British police and the FBI unraveled his web of lies.

He is now resident at Dartmoor Prison at Princetown serving a seven and a half year sentence which will be almost doubled unless he repays the stolen money.

Birch returned to Exeter Crown Court 18 months after his sentence to face a confiscation hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA).

He sacked his barrister and represented himself, despite claiming that he was almost illiterate and could not understand the case against him. He said all the banking and accounting was handled by his former wife Grit and he has no idea what happened to the money.

He said: ‘My reading and literacy are poor. I left school at 14 and for 20 years my wife, who was an accountant, did everything. I cannot even use a computer.

‘I have never done any accounts. I don’t have any money. If I had money I would not have gone bankrupt. I have absolutely nothing at all. A large amount went into the stud and the horses.’

He said he lost everything when Higher Lowton Farm was repossessed by a bank.

Judge Graham Cottle declared the amount by which Birch benefited from crime to be £7,528,613 and his available assets to be £5,816,199.44.

He ordered him to repay this amount within three months or serve an additional seven years in default. He said: ‘For ten years this man was a full- time fraudster. He has been breathtakingly dishonest throughout the history of this case. Very large sums were dissipated in extravagant living.

‘The onus is on him to produce a clear and cogent evidence about his assets. He has failed to do so completely. I accept the evidence of the prosecution and unhesitatingly reject his evidence.

‘He is a proven liar and fraudster and the evidence I heard from him simply confirmed that view. I have no doubt whatsoever he has assets he has not disclosed.’

In the original case Birch, aged 65, admitted four counts of removing or converting criminal property and one of possessing articles for use in fraud and was jailed for seven years, six months.

Grit Birch, aged 47, of Rifford Road, Exeter, admitted possession of articles for the use in fraud and was jailed for six months, suspended for two years.

DC Paul Manifield told the POCA hearing that the calculation of how much Birch made from his fraud and his assets relied on documents seized from the farm and his accountants in Exeter.

He said all legitimate sources of income and genuine expenditure on the farm and stables had been excluded from the final calculations.

Nothing was known about what happened to a transfer of £1.8-million to a bank in Liechtenstein. Photographs of safety deposit boxes in Zurich and receipts for renting them have been found but it is not known what they contain.

He had horses with a book value of £1.625,000 at the time of his arrest. He also had vehicles including a BMW, a Porsche and a Range Rover but these have not been traced.

He withdrew £698,000 in cash from bank accounts and transferred £1.1-million which has never been traced.

DC Manifield said names used by Birch include: His Excellency Sir Joseph Birch of the Royal House of Aragon, Sir Joseph Birch, Major Birch and Lord Birch. His email address was sirjoseph.

In other documents he boasted about his ‘long military career with UK special forces, service with the Royal Marines, providing security for royalty, and being part of an attempt to rescue Terry Waite’.

Birch and his wife lived a lavish lifestyle, taking exotic foreign holiday, buying top of the range cars, and negotiating to buy expensive yachts.

He posed as a jet-setting businessman, dressed in expensive suits, and impressed would-be investors by staying at top hotels including the Trump Tower in Las Vegas.

He invented a string of fictitious companies with impressive names such as Energy Enterprises International, Ultimate Elite, Phlorian Racing and the Birchwood Stud as ways to dupe investors.

He forged documents which purported to show the companies had vast resources. One was said to have 10 billion Euros cash in the bank, and others to have assets of a trillion US dollars and 3 trillion Euros.

Investors were conned into parting with their money by being sent photos of credit notes at the US Federal Reserve worth trillions of dollars.

The fraud was truly international with victims in Spain, Italy and Germany, the bogus businesses being based in Holland and Germany, and money laundered through an account in Liechtenstein.

Despite his luxury lifestyle Birch was in reality a failed businessman with 14 convictions for theft or fraud, including a benefits fiddle.