Internet love-rat Jonathan Price has been jailed for seven years after using a “sugar daddies” dating website to fleece three women and their families out of £172,000.

The serial conman, formerly of High Street, Coddenham, had previously been imprisoned for four years by Ipswich Crown Court in 2009 for a string of deceptions throughout Suffolk. He was said to have met one of the women he deceived during his latest scam before being jailed.

Price posed as a super-wealthy businessman, telling his victims he was an ex-SAS man, a friend of the late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky and that he had a home in Sandbanks, one of the most exclusive addresses in the country.

He even married one victim, with whom he has had a child. They have now divorced.

Jailing the 41-year-old at Teeside Crown Court, Judge Howard Crowson told Price he had preyed on the vulnerability of victims who were seeking love and companionship.

The court previously heard Price had pretended he was dying and invented a friend who would e-mail progress reports to one victim to throw her off the scent.

After convincing the women he had millions in offshore accounts, he managed to borrow many thousands from his victims and their ageing parents by claiming he had cash flow problems and that he would repay them once the issues were resolved.

But penniless Price would vanish after claiming to be terminally ill with a brain tumour and move in with another woman, who he had already been developing as a potential victim.

He met women online by using sugardaddies.com which aimed to match beautiful women with wealthy men, the court heard.

Price fleeced a florist in her 30s from the Bournemouth area after beginning a relationship with her, then moving in with her parents and conning £24,000 out of them for life-prolonging cancer treatments he pretended he needed.

He moved on to prey upon a London-based retail manager who lost £20,000 and was left bankrupt.

While with her Price targeted a chemist from County Durham who he married after charming her online, before defrauding her of £72,000 and her parents out of a further £7,000. Businesses also lost around £50,000 from his offending.

Price, whose latest address was near Darlington, was arrested after his parents-in-law reported him to the police. He subsequently admitted 14 frauds and a theft.

While living in Coddenham Price committed deceptions involving fraudulent cheques in Bacton, Stowmarket, Chattisham, Needham Market, Capel St Mary, Leiston, Tostock and Coddenham between January and October 2008.