Joyti De-Laurey, a former personal assistant at investment bank Goldman Sachs who stole more than £4 million (€6 million) from her banker bosses, was sentenced to seven years in jail by a British court yesterday.
She was branded "duplicitous, deceitful and thoroughly dishonest" by Judge Christopher Elwen, pronouncing sentence at London's Southwark Crown Court.
"It is clear to me that lying is woven into the fabric of your being," he told her.
De-Laurey (35) was found guilty in April on 20 counts of using false cheques or obtaining money transfers by deception.
"You perpetrated, from base and covetous motives, a planned and calculated breach of trust," Judge Elwen said.
Looking drawn, she stared blankly ahead as she was sentenced to seven years on one count and five years on all the others, the sentences to run concurrently.
De-Laurey's four-month trial earlier this year hogged headlines with its details of her lavish spending and what her lawyers called the "fairy tale" wealth of the bankers she robbed.
Her husband Anthony (50), a former Ministry of Defence police officer who was found guilty of charges relating to the retention of proceeds of the fraud, was sentenced to 18 months.
De-Laurey's mother, Devi Schahhou, who was found guilty of the same charges relating to the retention of stolen money, was sentenced to six months, suspended for two years.
The judge rejected their defence that they had been ignorant of the source of De-Laurey's sudden wealth.
De-Laurey had splashed out on more than £380,000 worth of Cartier jewellery, a power boat and a villa in Cyprus.
When arrested in May 2002, she had an interest in 11 properties and an order for a £175,000 Aston Martin luxury car.
Her lawyer, Mr Jeremy Dein, QC, told the court she had received death threats in January and was on suicide watch, having twice attempted to take her own life.
Mr Dein had asked the judge to take into account her previous good character.
Had it not been for the 1998 bankruptcy of a sandwich bar business she and her husband ran, she "would still be filling sandwiches... rather than facing imprisonment," he said.
The financial troubles that followed coincided with her working for Goldman Sachs, where she came across "a Dallas-type world where huge, unthinkable sums of money stared her in the face day in day out", Mr Dein said.
Only £1.5 million of the near £4.5 million stolen has been recovered, and the police and Goldman Sachs will now be focusing their attention on a missing £1 million that was neither returned nor accounted for by De-Laurey's spending.
