A serial con man set to be released from prison next month has been sentenced to 18 months behind bars for another offence.

Jonathan Ratteray, 27, pleaded guilty to fraudulently inducing Kassa Richardson to invest $56,000 over a two-year period ending in May, 2009.

The court heard that Mr Richardson was initially contacted on the phone by a woman identifying herself as LaToya Smith who, over the course of several conversations, convinced the complainant that she needed $10,000 to pay for her father’s medical care. She also told Mr Richardson that he would receive $13,000 in return.

Mr Richardson eventually agreed to give Ms Smith $8,000, and she told him to deliver it to Ratteray at the City Hall car park in Hamilton. He delivered the money to the defendant in cash, but Ms Smith contacted him again asking for the further $2,000 for her father’s medical care. He again agreed, depositing $2,000 into Ratteray’s bank account.

Ms Smith subsequently stopped contacting the complainant but Ratteray approached him about investing further money with guaranteed returns. Over the course of two years, he said he wired Ratteray around $56,000, but never saw a single penny in returns.

The court heard that Mr Richardson contacted police last October after reading about Ratteray’s conviction for another pair of dishonesty cases. Following an investigation, the defendant was charged in Magistrates’ Court this August and pleaded guilty. Given his previous convictions, the matter was sent to Supreme Court for sentencing.

Prosecutor Karen King told the court that Ratteray was a persistent offender with multiple convictions for fraud, calling for a sentence of four years behind bars.

However, defence lawyer Elizabeth Christopher said the sum taken was closer to $30,000, and noted that the complainant had waited four years before filing a police report. She questioned the timing of proceedings, noting that Ratteray was set to be released from prison in October for offences which occurred after the case before the court.

Ratteray himself apologised for wasting the court’s time, saying: “It’s taken me a while to realise that I did have a problem.

“I’m doing what I have to do to make myself better. I cannot keep going down this road. I need to try my best to make a new me.”

Delivering his sentence, Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves said Ratteray seemed intelligent, well spoken and respectful — all traits he said were consistent with other con men who he has dealt with through the courts.

“I understand why people who would otherwise be considered intelligent would be conned by you,” he said. “You used what may appear to others to be a simple story that others would say doesn’t add up. That what makes you so dangerous, because your story shows that regardless of what sentence we give to you, you are going to do it again. And the reason you are going to do it again is because it works.”

The judge noted the similarities between the matter before the courts and one of Ratteray’s previous convictions, in which he convinced former cricketer Ernest (Barry) DeCouto to donate $74,600 to a female friend who needed help paying his mother’s medical bills, saying the defendant had found and repeated a successful “business model”.

“I guess you have come to recognise that it works, so there’s no need to vary it or change it because by the time you were caught you were able to accumulate much money,” Mr Justice Greaves said.

Given all the circumstances, the judge sentenced Ratteray to 18 months in prison, ordering the sentence run consecutively to the time already being served.