A bogus doctor was behind bars today after admitting he conned more than £1.5m from the government, charities and unsuspecting patients.

Barian Baluchi, of Nightingale Road, Hampton, south-west London, admitted a total of 30 charges just minutes before his trial was due to start today at London's Middlesex Guildhall crown court.

The offences, committed between December 1998 and August 2003, include 12 of obtaining a money transfer by deception, three of doing an act intended to pervert the course of public justice, two of procuring a registration by making false declarations, and one of supplying false and misleading information to the Charity Commission.

Baluchi, 43, also admitted a string of other offences involving perjury, other deception charges, causing actual bodily harm, administering a medicinal product, possessing a class A drug, and having class B drugs with intent to supply.

Using fictitious qualifications, he set himself up as an expert counsellor, neuro-psychiatrist, plastic surgeon and even a professor who had supposedly trained at Harvard and Oxford and lectured on both sides of the Atlantic.

The former taxi driver and waiter, who also faked his graduation photograph at Imperial College, London, used numerous pseudonyms, stole other people's identities and repeatedly gave evidence in court.

One case he was involved in saw a sex attacker jailed for life at Birmingham crown court in 2003. In addition he frequently gave expert testimony to the Immigration Appeals Tribunal and prepared hundreds of often critical reports about the mental trauma asylum seekers would suffer if they were sent home.

Another man was prescribed an antidepressant for neck pain while a third was left in agony for a month after paying a fortune to have his twisted spine manipulated under anaesthetic.

Over the years the twice married father of two amassed a fortune and moved his Kimia clinic to a prestigious central London address, bought a luxury £670,000 five bedroom house and fast cars and sent his daughter to private school.

By the time he was arrested nearly 18 months ago, the man whose long-running deception saw him change his name and date of birth no less than 20 times, was styling himself "Professor Barian Samuel Baluchi MB ChB MSc PhD consultant psychiatrist and neuro-psychiatrist".

Judge Henry Blacksell remanded him in custody until sentencing on January 26.