A former royal bodyguard who masterminded a £3 million investment scam has been jailed for six years.
Paul Page, 38, used a bogus property company and "outlandish lies" to con colleagues, family, friends and others out of savings, redundancy cash and pension pay-outs.
Page, of Granville Road, Chafford Hundred, Grays, Essex, was convicted of fraudulent trading between 2003 and 2006.
He then gambled much of the money away, before squandering the rest on his "expensive lifestyle" and mounting debts.
Some victims, including those guarding the Queen, not only lost six-figure fortunes but their homes and marriages as well, London's Southwark Crown Court heard.
Unrepentant throughout, he then used his trial to make a string of allegations about colleagues at work.
He claimed officers posed for photographs on the Queen's throne, peddled hardcore pornography and steroids, slept on duty, smuggled friends into royal garden parties and offered them Buckingham Palace parking spaces for West End shopping trips.
Original defence papers, ruled inadmissible by the judge, alleged that golfing enthusiast the Duke of York routinely asked members of the elite royal police squad to act as "ball boys" while they were supposed to be protecting him.
Page also maintained victims either knew their money was being invested in spread-betting, or trusted him so much they never bothered to ask what he was going to do with it.
But the Crown branded his defence as "pie in the sky" and dismissed his "diversionary tactics" as no more real than "fairies at the bottom of the garden".
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