Joseph Rooney (35) has six months to give up all the remaining proceeds he made through tax evasion and money laundering, thought to be £1,062,000, or he faces five years’ imprisonment.

He was jailed for 18 months last June after he admitted money laundering offences totalling more than £400,000, including the purchase of Lodge Farm, Desborough Road in Braybrooke. Although he was released earlier this year he is now serving another sentence for an unrelated matter.

In a four-day hearing at Northampton Crown Court which concluded last Thursday, he was prosecuted under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, designed to confiscate a criminal’s profits from crime.

Judge Peter Morrell ruled that Rooney had a criminal lifestyle, had profited from it by £5,671,792, and has £1,062,397 which can be confiscated.

Rooney, who is said to be illiterate, made £4,305,827 in cash and had ownership or a share in four properties in Northamptonshire, Berkshire and Bedfordshire.

He evaded both VAT and income tax while importing expensive cars and then laundered the proceeds by buying Lodge Farm, which is now worth £635,000, as well as a property in Windsor Avenue, Desborough, a £151,000 house in Monks Lane, Newbury, and a £244,000 property in Dunstable Road, Luton.

Judge Morrell said: “In light of the findings I have made and for reasons set out, this defendant has a criminal lifestyle.

“I declare the benefit as £5,671,792 and I find the realisable assets available to satisfy the order as £1,062,397 and I make a confiscation order in that sum.

“I order that is paid within six months and the term in default of payment the defendant must serve in prison is five years.”

Rooney failed to pay income tax on the money generated from importing Bentleys, Mercedes, BMWs and a Range Rover, using a false identity, and laundered the money through an offshore company while buying the various properties.

He was jailed at Hull Crown Court last year after pleading guilty to six deception charges spanning from February 1990 to February 2006.

At the time, Christopher Donnellan, QC, prosecuting, said: “He created a substantial wealth primarily from the importation of cars and as a result of that business had not made any account to the Revenue. One of the reasons he was able to do that was that he created a false ID.”

Using the name Laurence Connors – an ID stolen from a man with severe disabilities living in a Lancashire care home – he ran Prestige Cars and JR Specialist Cars and applied for mortgages for the properties, including the Braybrooke farm which was then transferred to the ownership of a company in the British Virgin Islands called Rainmark.

Any term of imprisonment imposed under the Proceeds of Crime Act must be served in full, without automatic release at the halfway mark.