A city investor jailed for a £1 million fraud continued the scam in prison and ripped off fellow inmates.

Christopher Fallon persuaded prisoners, their friends, partners and relatives to hand over £162,000 by promising high returns on property and share investments.

Some of his victims were also fraudsters and he felt safe they wouldn't be believed if they ever complained to police.

Today Fallon was found guilty of 20 counts of fraud and was jailed for five years.

Judge John Sessions called Fallon a "very deceitful man" and said he had no doubt he would launch new scams on his release.

Prison may not be Fallon's only punishment. Some of his victims wrote to the court and one warned him: "I will get you". Another said: "I'll be waiting for you."

Fallon never earned his fellow inmates a penny and when police raided his cell they found receipts for "extravagant payments" by him and later discovered he had booked rooms at luxury hotels. He also sent cheques to his former wife and his father.

Fallen was serving his sentence at Ford Open Prison near Arundel, a prison described as a "relaxed regime" by Julian Woodbridge, who prosecuted at Chichester Crown Court.

Mr Woodbridge said Fallon gained the confidence of his fellow inmates by explaining he had a history in investments.

He said: "People, when faced with the prospect of great sums of money, don't always take as much care as they might normally do."

He said that Fallon, originally of Fairmile Court, Cobham, Surrey, presented himself as being experienced in the investment business and had promised that investors would make huge profits in a short space of time.

Fallon, 42, was allowed out of prison on day trips to nearby towns where he opened bank accounts to deposit his investors money.

Fallon, now transferred from Ford, denied all charges during the three-week trial.

He wept occasionally and insisted he borrowed the money to pay off a court confiscation order imposed after previous convictions for fraud.

Mr Woodbridge told the jury Fallen had some experience "of a dubious nature" in the city but a High Court injunction obtained in the 1990s banned him from the investment business and this was still in force in 2004 when he conned Ford inmates.

Mr Woodbridge said Fallon was sent to Ford in 2002 after he pleaded guilty to a string of similar frauds on clients involving a total of £973,000. He said Fallon was later ordered to hand over £638,000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act but the amount was still owed.

Mr Woodbridge said the scam at Ford lasted nearly nine months. Fallon, he said, promised inmates he could produce as much as a 33 per cent return on their investment in shares or his business of buying and re-selling repossessed homes.

Fallon told one inmate he was on to a "dead cert" but all of his clients ended up losing money. Fallon, Mr Woodbridge said, sometimes paid some money back but it was often to entice the inmate to invest more.

All of this money came from other inmates. Mr Woodbridge said: "He was robbing Peter to pay Paul."