Giovanni Di Stefano (fraudster)

Giovanni Di Stefano (born 1 July 1955) is an English businessman and convicted fraudster. He has been involved in legal cases for high-profile notorious defendants worldwide; he has no legal qualifications and is not registered to work as an advocate in the UK or Italy. He has been referred to as "The Devil's Advocate" for his advocacy on behalf of such claimed clients as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević. He was also a business associate of the Serbian paramilitary leader and indicted war criminal Željko Ražnatović.

He has been convicted four times in Ireland and the United Kingdom of fraud and related criminal offences, serving a total of eight and a half years for convictions between 1975 and the late 1980s. He was described by a judge as "one of life's great swindlers". His most recent conviction was in March 2013 when he was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment after being found guilty or pleading guilty to 27 charges including deception, fraud and money laundering between 2001 and 2011 related to "tricking people into thinking he was a bona fide legal professional".

Di Stefano was born in Petrella Tifernina near Campobasso in Southern Italy. When his father emigrated to England to work in a shoe factory, Giovanni and his mother later followed settling in Irchester, Northamptonshire when Giovanni was six years old. He then went on to study at John Lea School in Wellingborough, and later spent one year at Wellingborough Grammar School (which later became Wrenn School). In his 1986 fraud trial and in his entry in Marquis Who's Who he claimed that he had obtained a PhD in law from Cambridge University around this time, but this claim was later found to be without foundation. In his twenties, he claimed to have 'earned a fortune importing videotapes' from Hong Kong. Despite living much of his early life in England, he considered himself an Italian. During this time at school in England he was often called "John", the English for "Giovanni".

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