'Faith healer' who promised to hang cash off a magical tree faces jail

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A heartless 'faith healer' who preyed on vulnerable clients desperate for spiritual healing to fund her excessive lifestyle was jailed today for ten years.

59-year-old Juliette D'Souza persuaded 11 susceptible people to hand her £1 million to cure terminal illnesses, help disabilities and for fertility treatment.

She promised the cash would be hung off a magical tree deep in the Amazonian rainforest by shamans.

But instead she blew their money on flights, antique furniture, Louis Vuitton handbags and renting multiple flats in Hampstead in north London. Today a jury at Blackfriars Crown Court unanimously found D'Souza guilty of 23 counts of obtaining property by deception and fraud after just one hour of deliberation.

D'Souza looked showed no expression and stared straight ahead from the dock as the foreman read the verdict.

Remanding her in custody ahead of sentence tomorrow morning, Judge Ian Karsten, QC, said:

D'Souza, who once advertised her services in Tatler magazine, charged just £35 for a consultation, but would then demand huge sums of money to heal her clients' problems.

The self-proclaimed 'shaman' claimed she healed John Cleese's daughter of cancer, could introduce a young tenor to Simon Cowell and boasted she had known Princess Diana.

But her former clients told a rather different story from the witness box. One 41-year-old woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, told the court D'Souza persuaded her to part with £176,000 for help conceiving a baby.

But her joy when she finally conceived three years later turned sour after D'Souza told her to abort her six-week old fetus as it was deformed, leaving the woman distraught.

  • One mother of a 10-year-old boy with Down's syndrome was conned out of £42,000 by D'Souza in 2004 after she claimed the cash would cure his behavioural problems

  • 83-year-old opera singer Sylvia Eaves was duped out of more than £256,000 after first employing D'Souza to cure her stomach problems. She later became embroiled in a scam which saw her investing money in an 'alternative medicine clinic' in Peru

  • Retired solicitor Richard Collier-Wright also paid £7000 to D'Souza to cure his leukemia

  • And Sunday Times photographer Jocelyn Bain-Hogg began paying cash to D'Souza in late 2004 to help his mother who was having heart surgery, racking up £43,000 in 'sacrifice' payments to D'Souza. D'Souza had 'told him his mother would die if he didn't pay'

D'Souza, who has already spent time in prison, has five previous convictions for 28 counts of fraud and four counts of theft. S