A convicted conman with an array of offences, including stealing millions in a mortgage scam, has lost a more than two decades fight against his deportation.
Zambian native Alick Kapikanya was first warned about being sent to his home country in February 1992 after being convicted of attempted fraud.
After serving a prison sentence for theft in March 2000, the 57-year-old lost an appeal against deporation, but no order to remove him from the UK was ever made.
A decade later in February 2010, following a dishonesty conviction, a judge again ruled for Kapikanya to be deported.
After appealing against that ruling, the man was granted leave to remain.
However, after serving a six-year prison sentence for stealing £3.5million in an elaborate mortgage scam, a judge ruled he must be deported.
It comes after Kapikanya was imprisoned for six years at Manchester Crown Court in 2014 after leading a gang of con artists that stole identities of elderly people across Greater Manchester and the north west.
The court heard the group seized ownership of their houses and then repeatedly re-mortgaged them.
PA | Manchester Crown Court
Homeowners had to fight to reclaim their houses while Kapikanya lived a lavish lifestyle.
He was chauffeured in limousines, stayed in luxury hotels and gambled away £170,000 in one night.
Four of the man's victims lived in neighbouring homes at Walkden Road, Worsley.
A house in Cheshire, owned by a retired farmer, along with three properties owned by a couple in Sleaford, Lincolnshire were also targeted.
GETTY
|The man was driven around in Limousine's as his victims fought for their homes
Kapikanya accrued 11 criminal convictions in the UK.
After his release, he again appealed against a deportation order.
The Appeal Court heard he arrived in the UK in April 1983 at the age of 14. He was to be adopted.
The adoption fell through, and, Kapikanya was "assimilated into a religious cult", the court heard.
He is now married with a 20-year-old son, and at an earlier appeal argued he was in remission from stomach cancer and had anxiety.
He was described as being "socially and culturally integrated into the United Kingdom".
The court also heard he had "no familial or social links with Zambia".
Barrister Zane Malik KC argued that deportation would be "unduly harsh" on the 20-year-old son.
Malik added that Kapikanya had lived in the UK for 42 years which went towards "very compelling circumstances".
Appeal Court judges Lord Justice Bean, Lord Justice Peter Jackson and Lord Justice Baker rejected the man's appeal and ordered for him to be deported.
They wrote that he had been the "subject of five decisions that he should be deported over a period of a quarter of a century".
"The system of appeals and orders for reconsideration has served him well in enabling him to remain in the UK throughout the period," the justices continued.
"But in my view the Secretary of State should now, at last, be allowed to put the November 2016 deportation order into effect."