PRIVATE schoolboy swindler Edward Toller wore top hats to the races, posed on yachts and wrote in French on his Facebook page.

But when it came to his sentence of eight years prison for defrauding elderly Australians of $1.74m he blamed his elite English boarding school upbringing, Fairfax News reported.

A judge told Toller’s court hearing that he had treated his victims, all aged over 70, as “human ATMs”.

The son of English horse trainers Toller told a Sydney court that being sent away from home to an elite private school had a “domino effect” that caused him to resent authority.

The NSW District Court heard that leaving home so young made him question why his parents “would do this to their child”.

In reality, Toller was an alcoholic and a chronic gambler who duped 14 elderly and unsophisticated investors of their life savings.

He then bet all the money on horse racing, Sportsbet, or Luxbet or spent it shopping.

The dual British-Australian national targeted victims who had already lost money through his fraudulent firm Velvet Assets by fuelling their desperation to recoup their losses through another of his crooked firms.

Four people invested more than $300,000 each and three victims aged between 70 and 85, lost all their savings

Toller posed as a financial adviser and lived in the exclusive eastern Sydney suburb of Vaucluse.

Detectives raided his house last year while investigating a deregistered finance and investment company.

Following his arrest last June, police asked Toller where all the money was, to which he replied, “it’s gone”.

“I spent it, I gambled it,” he told them.

Fairfax News reported the District Court heard Toller’s father described his son as having “an ability to charm people, young and old alike”.

Toller, who also has convictions for assault and drink driving, said about his victims, “I feel like crap for what I’ve done to them”.

But Judge Norrish said he didn’t believe Toller had any intention to pay their money back.

Last year, Toller pleaded for bail so that he could “attend to his family’s financial affairs” and be with his de facto partner and their young child.

On Friday, Judge Norrish sentenced Toller, 34, to eight years with a non-parole period of five years, meaning that his earliest release date will be in June 2022.