A “SPIRITUAL healer” fraudster conned nearly £1million in cash out of Hampstead’s wealthiest residents to fuel a designer lifestyle by claiming she had supernatural powers that could cure terminal cancer, infertility and disabled children, a court has heard. 

Juliette D’Souza allegedly amassed a vast fortune over 12 years by threatening death and misfortune to vulnerable, sometimes dying, people if they didn’t hand over hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The “confidence trickster” then blew the cash in spending sprees on property, plane tickets and shopping trips to Cartier, Chanel and Louis Vuitton, Blackfriars Crown Court was told this week. 

From 1998 to 2010, Ms D’Souza, of Perrins Lane, Hampstead, is accused of operating a sophisticated hoax in which she convinced some of London’s richest residents into believing she was an Oxford University-educated “shaman” and “faith healer” who helped celebrities Simon Cowell and Princess Diana get in touch with spiritual leaders in South America who could cure their problems in return for excessive amounts money. 

Ms D’Souza, 59, was arrested in 2012 and charged with 20 counts of obtaining property by deception and three counts of fraud. She  denies all the charges.

Benjamin Aina, prosecuting, told the jury on Monday how many of her victims came to her in desperation, referred by an unsuspecting osteopath who was “under her spell” himself.  

The court was told that in 2004 the parents of a disabled child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, handed over £42,000 to improve the “physical and/or mental health” of their son. 

Mr Aina added that a woman who was desperate to have a baby allegedly gave her £176,000 between 2005 and 2007 believing Ms D’Souza had magical powers that could help her. He went on to claim that once she had a grip on her victims she would extort further riches by claiming to predict further calamities hanging over their heads and “isolate” them from their worried friends and family.

One couple returned to Ms D’Souza 10 times between 1998 and 2004 spending £276,700 in obtaining “protection” from death, cancer, redundancy, for success­ful eye surgery and from the “spirit” of a step-father”, the court heard. 

Ms D’Souza claimed she had taken their cash, sealed in a normal envelope, the trial was told, and flown it to the small sovereign state of Suriname, in South America, where “shamans” Pa and Oma placed it under a magical tree, a measure which would solve their problems. 

The victims were taken in, Mr Aina said, because of her skills as a fraudster which included a bogus degree from Oxford, fake business cards claiming she was a trained solicitor with a practice in Marylebone High Street and name-dropping her former “celebrity clients” as well as claiming her sister was David Cameron’s personal assistant.

He added that she used multiple aliases including Jaqueline McSherry, Vanessa Campbell, Margaret Campbell and Darcy Porter. 

The court heard that she often rented as many as four lavish properties at the same time – paid for in cash sometimes six months in advance to “give the impression of wealth and success”, spending £64,995 on rent alone between 2006 and 2007.

The fraud began to unravel, the court heard, after loyal follower Keith Bender, an osteopath from Holland Park who had fallen under her spell in 1996 after travelling to Suriname with her, started to suspect she was a scam artist when she asked him to pay outstanding bills on rental properties from envelopes of cash he believed had been sent to South America as “religious sacrifices”.

He broke into her flat in 2007, while she was out of the country being held in custody in Suriname for other matters, and photographed piles of designer goods as well as taking receipts totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash payments including a Rolex watch, £63,000 on jewellery and luxury goods, £40,000 on designer furniture and £37,000 in air tickets. 

Mr Aina said: “This case is about deceiving vulnerable members of the public into handing over their hard-earned money. It is about a professional confidence trickster. During this period Juliette D’Souza held herself out to be a faith healer. She told people she was a shaman. And by holding herself out as a faith healer she managed to con approximately £1m in cash from 11 members of the public.”

He added: “Four of these victims said by the time that she started to take money from them they were completely under her spell, often believing that if they did not do as she said, some terrible disaster would come upon them.”

Mr Aina said Ms D’Souza’s defence would claim that the case was a conspiracy from Mr Bender and 11 claimants to “do her down”.

The trial continues.