JUST two months ago he was at the centre of a high-profile bid to dig up millions of pounds worth of buried treasure, sunk in a swamp on a Canadian island.

Now Paul Hallam's own murky past has caught up with him, as the shamed businessman was forced to tell a court he is living in a car on the outskirts of Southampton in an effort to lessen his punishment.

After being unceremoniously dumped from the expedition after it was revealed he had been convicted of fraud offences, he has now been told he faces jail if he steps out of line again.

Hallam, 56, has been given an 18-month suspended prison sentence after admitting faking his qualifications to gain more than £150,000 in salary payments from educational organisations.

Sacked from his job as a porter at Southampton General Hospital, he had to walk and hitchhike for two days just to get to the crown court in Shrewsbury to be told his fate.

In mitigation, defence barrister Richard Jory said after the breakdown of his marriage and loss of the hospital job, Hallam is living in his car on the edge of an allotment, and relying on financial help from his mother. Sentencing him to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years, and ordering him to pay £500 costs, Judge Robin Onions told Hallam he was "pathetic".

And the man who has claimed to have a knighthood and to have been a Brigadier with the Gambian army, was last night branded a "fantasist" by police.

Hallam had admitted two counts of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception after claiming to have a PhD in Cybernetics, a PE degree from the Army, and two more degrees.

His fake CV landed him a top job at a Midlands education company, who created the role of operations development director especially for him after he had applied for a job as a principal.

Mark Bancroft, an accredited financial investigator from West Mercia Police, whose lengthy investigation into Hallam led to his conviction, said his crimes were very serious.

"Paul Hallam concocted a web of lies and was extremely convincing but sooner or later it was inevitable he would be found out," he said.

"Some people may think he was a harmless fantasist. But the police take extremely seriously the fact that he was responsible for the education of young people when he did not have the necessary qualifications to teach, and indeed, that over a number of years he received a substantial salary to which he was not entitled."