An “accomplished conman” who claimed to be the illegitimate son of financier Edmund De Rothschild was today sentenced to 18 years in prison for defrauding a single mother and raping a schoolgirl.

Unemployed Alexander Marc De Rothschild-Hatton claimed to be an Oxford-educated international financier as part of his ruse to bleed more than £300,000 from divorcee Christine Handy.

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   Alexander De Rothschild

The 49-year-old, of Bowling Green Road, Cirencester, was found guilty yesterday at Bristol Crown Court of seven counts of obtaining money transfers by deception.

He was also convicted last May of four counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault.

Judge Julian Lambert sentenced De Rothschild-Hatton at Bristol Crown Court to 15 years for the sexual offences and three years for the fraud offences. Both terms will be served consecutively.

He was convicted in a separate trial last May of seven unrelated counts of sexual assault and rape.

Bristol Crown Court heard De Rothschild-Hatton told “preposterous” lies to Mrs Handy, who had her fourth child with the defendant, in an attempt to take considerable sums of money from her.

The pair went on to form a relationship after first meeting in June 2003 in a coffee shop in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Mrs Handy, 45, told the court when she first met the defendant away from the coffee shop, he started to talk about his apparently illustrious background.

“He talked about schools he attended,” she said.

“He started off with one school and ended up with another. First he was at Westminster and that ended up as Eton. He said he was an outstanding pupil.

“He said he went to Oxford University at 15 years old. He had a degree as an engineer and also as an economist.”

Mrs Handy said at a subsequent meeting De Rothschild-Hatton brought his passport.

“He turned up with his passport. He said ’because I want you to know who I really am’. He said he was a Rothschild.”

She later added: “He said he was adopted. He said his real father was Edmund.”

Questioning her further on the name De Rothschild, Mr Mather-Lees said: “So he was purporting he was the illegitimate son of one of the De Rothschilds.”

Mrs Handy replied: “Yes, it was the name that came with the passport.”

Mrs Handy told the court De Rothschild-Hatton claimed to have recently returned from Helsinki, Finland, where he worked as an industrialist.

She said he claimed he could not tell her any more, as he was governed by the Official Secrets Act.

De Rothschild-Hatton also claimed to have been acquainted with stock investor George Soros, who was once accused of contributing to the UK’s Black Wednesday crisis in the early Nineties.

Mrs Handy lent De Rothschild-Hatton sums ranging from £50,000 to £105,000 for London Business School fees, income tax demands and investment opportunities.

But in reality he was splashing the cash on luxury items including clothes from Burberry and Ralph Lauren, and a £66,000 BMW convertible.

She told the court a member of his family approached her and told her “he was not who he was proposing to be”, so in September 2006 she confronted him.

De Rothschild-Hatton responded by ending the relationship, but she pursued him and tracked him down in New York state, in the US, in a town called White Plains.