Bogus forensic expert Gene Morrison was branded an "inveterate and compulsive liar" as he was jailed for five years for a string of deception charges.
Morrison, 48, from Hyde, Cheshire, conned courts for almost three decades posing as an expert investigator. But he left school with no qualifications and simply downloaded sham degrees from a bogus university in the US.
He was convicted on Wednesday after a four-week trial of 22 charges including perjury, perverting the course of justice and obtaining money by deception.
Police will now have to reopen 700 cases where he gave evidence or submitted reports.
Jailing him on Thursday, Judge Jeffrey Lewis said: "You yourself had no expertise worth speaking of. Your business was built on a whole series of lies.
"My impression of you as an inveterate and compulsive liar is borne out by the verdict of the jury. Your activities in various ways struck at the heart of the judicial process.
"You did not care about the truth, you were wholly dishonest, you did not care of the consequences of your actions to the administration of justice."
Morrison bluffed his way through hundreds of trials, conning judges, barristers, solicitors and police into believing he was qualified.
Described as a "complete charlatan" by police, he described himself as "Sherlock Holmes" and was paid at least £250,000 in taxpayers' cash, giving evidence from the witness box and writing reports, many of which he had simply cut and pasted from the internet.
Police are now having to reassess each case in which Morrison gave evidence, looking for possible miscarriages of justice, and opening the floodgates for appeals against convictions.
