The double life of John Keady was supported by an entanglement of lies designed to cheat a fortune out of his trusting victims.

Claims he was an investment banker, a business consultant, a photographer and even had cancer were all part of his arsenal, designed to help him trick his way through life.

Doubtless, his acknowledged success as a skilled sailor and setting sail alongside British legend Pete Goss and American adventurer Steve Fossett helped reinforce his grand deception.

Changing his name from Peter Berry to John Keady was all part of the elaborate scam.

None of the women in his life were safe from his pernicious intent.

Not even his 77-year-old widowed mother Elizabeth Berry – the hardworking woman who adopted him when he was six months old. She was left to fend off debt collectors after he had siphoned off her life savings.

Keady's first girlfriend, the family believes, was a Plymouth woman named Gillian, whom Keady promised to marry before ending the relationship six weeks before the wedding.

He later co-owned a garage in Newton Ferrers, where he had another girlfriend. When the venture failed his business partner was left with nothing.

He married his first wife as a young man, but the relationship was short-lived. His family said he left with more than £30,000 from the marriage.

The fraudster married his second wife, from Steyning, Sussex, in a whirlwind six- month relationship and the couple had a child together in the late 1990s.

His wife, a pharmaceuticals professional, had grown increasingly suspicious of his claims to own property all over the world. The family believes he left her bankrupt.

One of Keady's relatives said: "He's like a chameleon. Everything he does is to create an image he can sell to people. He's very articulate, very smooth. He has more talent in his little finger than most people will ever have."

By 1999 he was a well-known figure in the sailing community and used his contacts to trick an American sail-making company out of thousands of pounds.

A sailing talent and an acquaintance of British legend Pete Goss, Keady set a new world record in May 2001 when he skippered the Netergy.com trimaran from Plymouth to La Rochelle. He did it 10 hours faster than anyone else. A year later, he helped smash his own record by sailing the route with American adventurer Steve Fossett on board the entrepreneur's £8million PlayStation maxi-catamaran. The record still stands today.

By 2001 he had moved to Edinburgh where he got engaged to dental practice owner Elaine Goldsmith.

He became managing director of the business and, unbeknown to Elaine, embarked on several simultaneous relationships. Elaine's brother lost £5,000 when her fiancée disappeared – she gave up the business and moved abroad.

In May of that year, Keady began claiming he was an investment banker for Temple Bar International.

He met a science graduate from Dundee named Lynne through the Match website. She had known him for less than two months when he proposed by email.

Lynne, now 40, returned from a business trip in March 2002 to find her flat ransacked and her car and Keady long gone.

In a bid to track him down, she painstakingly pasted together shredded phone bills and credit card statements before calling every number she didn't recognise.

She said the phone calls unearthed around 15 other love interests with some as far afield as Singapore, Holland and the Czech Republic.

Lynne went to the police only to be told it was a civil matter. She later got a county court judgment against him in the Scottish courts.

One of the women she called was recently-divorced Julie Cumberland, then 39, who met the conman on the Dating Direct website.

After two weeks, he proposed and she was so convinced of his authenticity that she involved him in a sponsorship deal at work.

After speaking to Lynne, Julie from Woking, Surrey, confronted Keady and he confessed everything to her.

The two women then joined forces to warn other women about Keady and set up an awareness website titled Personal Safety Online.

They even appeared on GMTV to warn women against the serial con-artist.

With his trail of deceit about to catch up with him, coupled with his father's diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease, Keady decided to return to the family home in Callington, Cornwall.

In 2006, Keady persuaded bosses at Plymouth Pavilions he was a professional photographer, and began making money from taking pictures at weddings and sailing events.

On the surface a mix of designer clothes, expensive gadgets, regular business trips and a BMW 5 Series parked outside his home appeared to ooze wealth.

The car, it later turned out, had no engine, and the "business trips" were jaunts to Dorset, Havant, Wiltshire, or anywhere else he could stay with a potential victim.