A FAILED asylum seeker has been jailed for four years for swindling more than £180,000 from women he seduced.

Sheikh Ijaz, 37, from Pakistan, posed as a businessman and formed relationships with four women before stealing their money.

The smooth-talking conman, who lived in a guest house in Bowburn, and a bedsit in Neville’s Cross, County Durham, before his arrest, was caught after calls to police from several women he had tried to pick up.

Jenny Haigh, prosecuting at Durham Crown Court, said: “The ladies were all deceived out of their money.

“His latest victim said she loved him and believed they were going to marry. She says she feels sick.”

Ijaz, whose visa application was refused in 2000 and who has been living in the country illegally since 2005, pleaded guilty to three charges of fraud.

The court was told that he received £20,500 from a Doncaster woman he met at bingo after he told her he wanted to open a restaurant and a leather clothes shop.

He took the money between May 23 and July 1 last year, leaving her bankrupt.

He also persuaded a barmaid from Alnwick, in Northumberland, to give him £15,000 for a shop, between September 1 and December 1 last year, before she realised his intentions and threw him out of her home.

The court was also told that Ijaz defrauded an Asian doctor, who lived in Nelson, Lancashire, between January 1 and June 13 this year, of £152,000 by saying he wanted to open a Pizza Hut franchise and marry her.

As well as sending money transfers to friends and family in Pakistan, he hid a serious gambling addiction and would spend up to £3,000 a day in betting shops in and around Durham City, the court heard.

Jane Waugh, mitigating, said: “He has an addiction to gambling and kidded himself that it would be okay and that he would get a win and be able to pay the money back.”

The court was told that Ijaz was also wanted by police after he failed to attend a trial at Kingston Crown Court, in Kingston upon Thames, London, in January 2006, for the theft of a Nissan Primera from a 40-year-old Asian woman.

He pleaded guilty to this offence yesterday.

Ijaz, dressed in a black suit with a purple shirt and striped tie, sat with his head in his hands as the details of his deceit were read out.

He broke down in tears before addressing the court, saying: “I am not proud of what I have done.

“I am very ashamed and I want to say sorry.”

Judge Chris Prince said Ijaz would serve half of his sentence in prison and the rest on licence.

Judge Prince said: “Offences such as these involve a high degree of emotional betrayal.

It has been said that these offences are cruel and I agree.”