A conman has been jailed for nine months after admitting to duping football fans into believing they would be supplied with tickets for last year’s Juventus-Barcelona Champions League final.

Infamous serial fraudster Duncan Buttigieg, who is already serving time for other offences, admitted he had defrauded football fans by accepting a €500 deposit for tickets they never received.

Lawyers were among his victims, sources close to the investigations told The Sunday Times of Malta.

The football fans, who travelled to Berlin and paid good money to watch the ‘match of a lifetime’, instead had to settle for watching the game in a bar.

Just last July, the career fraudster from Għaxaq was sentenced to 30 months in jail after being convicted of fabricating a story about having to undergo knee surgery to trick a man into giving him €3,400.

The fans had to settle for watching the match of a lifetime in a bar

Earlier in the year, Mr Buttigieg was sentenced to nine years after he conned people into believing he was a car dealer and collectively defrauded his victims of more than €120,000 by demanding deposits for importating cars from the UK.

He was jailed after a court heard how his businesses, Direct From UK Car Dealer and Direct Cars Malta, failed to deliver the vehicles despite taking deposits ranging from €1,500 to €6,000. Almost 100 people fell victim to the scam.

In another case, he stands charged with conspiring to set fire to the garage and car of a police inspector from the Economic Crimes Unit. He also faces action after allegedly using a forged cheque belonging to his ex-girlfriend to purchase a €5,000 Rolex, which he then sold for €2,000 a few days later.

The court has so far heard how Mr Buttigieg told the buyer that the Rolex was an unwanted gift and that he needed the money to care for his six-year-old son, who was in hospital with stomach cancer.