A Goodmayes wig seller who scammed �285,000 out of vulnerable victims by telling them they had won fortunes in a lottery, has failed to persuade judges to cut his jail sentence.

Ghulam Rasoll Dadabhoy, 38, of Capel Gardens, ran legitimate wig and cosmetics businesses, but also used them as a “front” to launder the proceeds from the lottery frauds.

Twenty vulnerable victims, many of who were elderly – including a 66-year-old grandmother from Wallingford, Oxon, who lost �50,000 – parted with their savings after being told they had won enormous sums on overseas lotteries.

Victims were told they needed to pay thousands for taxes and transfer fees before the non-existant cash could be released.

Dadabhoy was jailed for five-and-a-half years at Southwark Crown Court in June, having been convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering and possession of articles for the use in fraud.

Last week he asked Lord Justice Hooper, Justice Hickinbottom and judge Warwick McKinnon, sitting at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, to reduce that term, saying he was not the instigator of the fraud and given too stiff a sentence.

But Mr Hickinbottom refused permission to appeal against sentence saying: “There were a number of vulnerable victims. Some were elderly and some suffered from dementia.

“Whilst he may not have set up this fraud, his level of involvement was high and sophisticated. We are firmly of the view that the sentence imposed was not excessive at all.

“This was the persistent, varied and sophisticated high-value fraud of many victims and we refuse this application,” the judge concluded.