PSYCHIATRISTS examining one of Britain's most notorious conmen could end up being duped just like his victims, a barrister has warned.

Paul Bint - branded "King Con" for his long string of outrageous confidence tricks - faces prison for posing as a top barrister in the Jill Dando murder trial in order to cheat a casualty doctor.

Yesterday, Rufus Stilgoe, prosecuting, told Inner London Crown Court the 41-year-old, who once tried to trick his way into Blackburn Royal Infirmary posing as a doctor, had a long history of fooling others.

He said any assessment of his mental stability ought to be viewed with a "certain amount of scepticism" and said it might be wise to get a second opinion.

The court was told that as doctor Annie Park-McGuinness treated Bint for minor injuries in University College Hospital, London, he convinced her he had been hurt crashing his Aston Martin.

After claiming he lived alone in Hampstead's so-called "millionaire's row" in north London, he told her he was Orlando Pownall QC, who prosecuted Barry George for killing TV presenter Miss Dando.

As a result, the thoroughly deceived medic took pity on him and allowed him to stay at her home, the court was told.

He then stole £60 cash and her gold credit card and used it and another card stolen from an elderly patient to go on a spending spree that included wining and dining a second woman who had taken his fancy.

Bint, a former hairdresser, is known to police under 25 different aliases and last year featured in a BBC documentary about his life.

He has clocked up a criminal record of more than 100 offences during a Walter Mitty-type lifestyle which stretched back to his youth.

He was jailed for five years in 1994 after a series of theft and deception offences at hospitals.

The notorious bogus doctor tried to con his way into Blackburn Infirmary in December 1993 posing as a locum by asking for a doctor's bleeper.

He was finally arrested at the Blackburn home of Jane Griffiths, granddaughter of shoe tycoon Tommy Ball.

East Lancashire hospitals were also put on alert in 1999 when Bint, who was staying at a Blackburn bail hostel, disappeared.

He befriended a school dinner lady in Blackburn before being recaptured by police in Barrowford, where he had tried to sell his story to a national newspaper reporter.

Bint, of Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh, has admitted eight counts of obtaining property by deception, two of theft and one of driving while disqualified last Christmas and New Year.

Just a day before the offences he had been freed in Scotland from a 30-month jail sentence imposed after he sweet-talked a Glaswegian car salesman into giving him a test drive of a £55,000 Aston Martin, which he stole.

Judge Leslie Burns adjourned the matter until August 19 after hearing a psychiatric report commissioned by the defence had not yet been prepared.