A self-styled lord was jailed for eight years today for his part in a “bold and sophisticated” bid to pull off the world’s biggest theft.

Hugh Rodley, whose aristocratic pretensions are based on a manorial title, teamed up with a gang of internet raiders targeting a £229 million Japanese bank fortune.

While Rodley arranged a massive money-laundering operation with an array of front companies and overseas bank accounts, an “insider” at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation unlocked its London offices so fellow conspirators could make “surreptitious” night-time visits, London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

They used special software to corrupt the bank’s computer system and access massive holdings of major companies such as Toshiba International, Nomura Asset Management and Sumitomo Chemical UK.

The audacious plot was foiled at the last minute by the complexities of inter-bank money transfers.

Rodley, 61, of Church End in Twyning near Tewkesbury, was convicted of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to transfer criminal property between January 1 and October 5 2004.

The 'lord of the fraud' behind the £229 million bank sting lived like a gent, but claimed to have operated in the murky world of international diamond trading.

Hugh Rodley, 61, enjoyed all the trappings of the rural aristocracy with a £2 million mansion at Twyning, riding stables, a Rolls Royce and an office in Mayfair.

But he bought his title after being born plain Brian McGough in Ireland in 1947.

Despite his English gent appearance, complete with bowler hat, he had a criminal record for offences including forgery and obtaining property by deception.

His manufactured persona began to unravel when jurors learned Rodley, under the name Hugh James McGough, admitted forging a document and obtaining goods by false representation in 1980.

The fraudster denied a charge of perverting the course of justice during the case at Birmingham Crown Court, but was eventually jailed for 15 months.

Seven years on, Rodley was convicted of three charges of obtaining property by deception.

Rodley later claimed to have operated in the murky world of international diamond trading with the notorious Adams family.

Following his arrest for hacking Sumitomo Matsui bank's computers and attempting to launder millions around the world, Rodley was interviewed by the Serious Organised Crime Agency at Gloucester police station.

During the interview in November 2006, Rodley claimed he met gangster Tommy Adams, 48, before travelling to world diamond centre Antwerp in Belgium.

Rodley claimed that £200,000 stolen from the Austrian Embassy's bank account in London to fund the diamond deal had gone missing.

Soho sex shop owner David Nash, 47, who along with Swede Inger Malmros, 58, was accused of 'fronting' Rodley's bank accounts around the globe where Sumitomo Matsui's customers' fortunes were to be sent.

Co-defendant and Rodley's business partner Bernard Davies committed suicide on January 16 – just days before the trial began after complaining of threats from an underworld villain known only as Mendes.

In a suicide note to police, the pensioner claimed he lived in fear of his life.

"I was threatened to be shot by someone called Mendes because I would not tell him where Rodley and Nash were – Rodley had taken cash from him," he wrote.

He wished SOCA well, ending his note: "Thank you for the way you have treated me. I'm very tired, I've lost the will to fight. Good luck."

Davies' letter also alerted prosecutors to a clandestine meeting between Rodley and Nash on the day he died.

When Nash was quizzed under cross-examination he admitted meeting Rodley on January 16 at the Volunteer pub in Waltham Abbey, Essex.

He said at the meeting Rodley begged Nash to lie to jurors about his involvement in sending a fax from a Cheltenham shop to secure 12 million Euros as part of 21 fraudulent transactions to accounts in Dubai, Spain, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Seychelles.

In the 'audacious' plot to defraud Sumitomo Matsui, Kevin O'Donoghue, 33, tampered with the City of London-based bank's sophisticated CCTV system to smuggle in hackers Gilles Poelvoorde, 34, and Jan Van Osselaer, 32.

On October 1 and 2, 2004 the hackers tried to transfer vast sums of cash to the front accounts in one of the biggest internet stings of all time.

Using the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Inter-Bank Financial Telecommunications) system, they attempted to pull off a crime which would have dwarfed the £53 million Tonbridge cash heist. In one transaction, an attempt was made to transfer more than 9 million Euros from the account of Sumitomo Chemical UK to front company Expo Investment SL, jurors heard.

But Poelvoorde and Van Osselaer inputted 'flawed' or incorrect codes and the transfers failed to go through.

In desperation, Rodley and Nash visited Vidivision in Cheltenham to fax a bank printout of one of the failed transfers to Dubai.

Nash admitted he visited Gran Canaria in the summer of 2004 to receive power of attorney over Rodley's accounts, but claimed he did so after he was offered cash payments from his boss.

The trial heard Rodley also targeted the English National Ballet by banking a fake cheque from the dance company for £45,120.

Watchmaker Casio was also an intended victim, with Rodley trying to bank a cheque from the firm for £35,399.

Rodley even scammed Nash, squandering more than £27,000 on credit and store cards by stealing Nash's identity. The future of Rodley's Tudor Manor home now appears uncertain.