A fake Melbourne gynaecologist who passed himself off as a medical practitioner and fertility specialist for a decade has been jailed for almost 10 years.

Raffaele di Paolo, 61, previously pleaded guilty or was found guilty of 51 offences including sexual penetration by fraud, common assault and obtaining property by deception.

Victorian County Court Judge Bill Stuart labelled di Paolo a “charlatan who has no insight and no remorse”, as he sentenced him nine years and six months in jail on Friday.

He performed a range of treatments on 30 victims, including men – from removing semen from testicles with a needle to injecting unknown substances into women’s stomachs – according to the ABC.

Di Paolo had never studied medicine but sold himself as a qualified IVF specialist who championed a more “natural” approach to IVF.

The court heard he told patients he had left Monash IVF or Melbourne IVF after falling out with other doctors, reported the ABC.

Di Paolo told several women they were pregnant when they were not. He took blood samples from women and injected them with unknown concoctions.

In some cases, said the ABC, di Paolo asked the husbands of the women to perform some of the procedures, including inserting ultrasound probes into their vaginas.

He also used a syringe to take semen from the testicles of some of the women’s partners without any anaesthetic.

You deliberately deceived your victims, you breached the trust they had in you, you encouraged false hope

He conducted an examination without gloves when one patient told him about her family’s history of breast cancer, reported the ABC.

During the two-day sentencing, the judge said di Paolo had a “profound” capacity for deception, which extended to fooling qualified IVF specialists.

“You deliberately deceived your victims, you breached the trust they had in you, you encouraged false hope,” Judge Stuart said, according to the ABC.

“You wrongfully touched them and penetrated their bodies, and you took large sums of money.

“There is not a shred of evidence that you acknowledged your wrongdoing.”

In one case, a doctor at the Epworth Hospital referred a patient to di Paolo, it was reported.

All up, the fake doctor fleeced more than $370,000 from his “patients”, the largest single amount being $40,000, according to the ABC.

Court documents show that di Paolo was investigated by the Health Services Commissioner between 2011 and 2013, while the Australian Health Practitioner’s Regulation Agency started investigating in 2014.

The matter was referred to Victoria Police in May 2015.

The delays in referring the matter to police were “extraordinary”, according to Steve Robson, president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

The court heard that between 2005 and 2015, di Paolo amassed 30 victims, women and their partners desperate for children, according to the AAP.

Judge Stuart accepted the fake doctor was driven by financial gain rather than sexual gratification.

The judge sentenced di Paolo to a non-parole period of six-and-a-half years and ordered he be placed on the sex offenders’ register for life.

-with agencies