Senior judges have ruled that the three weeks a film producer fraudster spent in a French jail awaiting extradition will count towards her 40 month prison sentence.
Lois Bhagwan, 57, was jailed last year after jurors at Oxford Crown Court convicted her of seven counts of fraud.
The Fijian national scammed almost £160,000 out of friends and acquaintances, persuading them to invest thousands of pounds by promising high-rates of return.
READ MORE: Jail for film producer fraudster who scammed £160k from her friends
The victims, who included former Fijian rugby international Mosese Rauluni were told that the money would help support The Lionheart Project, a charitable initiative she claimed would help connect communities around the world.
The Lionheart Project would also involve the production of a film and TV series highlighting the good works of groups across the globe, she claimed.
However, the funds invested between 2006 and 2010 was taken out by Bhagwan in cash and used to fund an ambassadorial, globe-trotting lifestyle.
A forceful personality, the former Milton-under-Wychwood resident also wowed victims by claiming to have connections with the great-and-the-good like then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In her papers, photographs of which were shown to jurors last year, were apparently the telephone numbers of the Dalai Lama and actress Kristin Scott-Thomas.
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Some of her investors, who had been left thousands of pounds out of pocket, later set up a website denouncing her and the Lionheart Project.
She told her trial last summer that it was ‘not right, what they’d done’. “I travelled all the time. They did it while I was out of the country in the field. That’s not right. They didn’t just do it to me but all the people who had helped.”
Eventually, in 2020, police tracked her down to Paris, where she was arrested.
She spent several weeks on remand in France before she was extradited to England to stand trial the following year at Oxford Crown Court.
Following a five-week trial, jurors found her guilty of seven counts of fraud but cleared her of a further three charges.
She was jailed for three years and four months by Judge Ian Pringle QC, who accused Bhagwan of the letting down her investors ‘very badly’.
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This week, the film producer was at the Court of Appeal to ask for the days she had spent abroad awaiting extradition to count towards the overall amount of time she will spend in prison serving her sentence. Typically, any time someone spends on remand before their conviction will count towards their sentence.
The appeal judges allowed her appeal. The 21 days she spent in France before being extradited to the UK will be taken into account.
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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.
To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk
Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward
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