London: He revelled in his nickname as the Devil’s Advocate for offering to represent some of the world’s most evil men.

Giovanni Di Stefano bragged of meetings with Osama bin Laden, Robert Mugabe and Serbian warlord Arkan as he travelled the globe.

Among his clients were road rage killer Kenneth Noye, timeshare fraudster John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer and slum landlord Nicholas van Hoogstraten.

But the flamboyant 57-year-old Italian self-styled ‘avvocato’, or advocate, failed to mention to any of them that he had no legal qualifications.

The closest he came was a “doctorate of law” from the University of Belgrade handed to him by brutal Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic - whom Di Stefano once called “a lovely man”.

Yesterday, his high-flying career came crashing down to earth when he was convicted of deception, fraud, money laundering and forgery between 2004 and 2012.

Now Di Stefano faces years behind bars after a London jury found him guilty of duping a string of clients out of almost £1 million.

The convictions finally expose the Italian as a liar and fantasist who lured the rich, powerful and notorious into his web of deceit. He attracted worldwide publicity for his outrageous bids to defend war criminals and serial killers, even claiming he would represent Adolf Hitler if he could.

Di Stefano travelled to war zones including Iraq and Serbia, preying on political instability and the egos of wealthy tyrants.

Born in a village in Italy, he moved to Britain as a child and grew up to make a dishonest living by offering to “defend the indefensible” in his broad Cockney accent. He also entered into a series of bizarre business ventures and was briefly a director of Dundee FC in 2003. At one stage he claimed to be worth £450 million. For years Di Stefano successfully dodged questions about his qualifications. But the authorities finally caught up with him at his holiday villa in Majorca in February 2011 when he was arrested pending extradition.

The two-month trial at Southwark Crown Court heard how Di Stefano ripped off a string of clients.

The court was told his victims included the wife of convicted killer Paul Bush, jailed for life at the Old Bailey for murder, who paid him £10,000 to try to get her husband bail.

Others lost money when Di Stefano took their cash and did little or almost no legal work in return. In his defence, he admitted he was not a qualified lawyer but said he thought he could still help people and surrounded himself with a top legal team.

After his conviction he tweeted: “It’s not and never will be the last of me, today was a loss but, there is always tomorrow!”

The conman, of Canterbury, has two previous convictions for dishonesty, in 1976 and 1986 under the name John Di Stefano. He was convicted yesterday of 25 offences and will be sentenced today.