A former Shropshire barman who conned unsuspecting people out of more than £500,000 “protection” money after posing as a spy has been cleared on charges of kidnapping by fraud.

Robert Hendy-Freegard could now be released from prison by the end of this year.

The Court of Appeal quashed Hendy-Freegard’s conviction for two offences relating to allegations that two of his victims were effectively deprived of their liberty by his deception and brainwashing.

Hendy-Freegard, 36, was alleged to have commandeered the lives of a string of victims during a decade-long charade that began when he worked as a barman at the Swan Inn in Newport.

There, he befriended a number of students from Harper Adams agricultural college and, following the suicide of an Irish student, began to pretend that he was a policeman or agent sent to investigate an IRA cell at the college.

Among his eight victims was student John Atkinson, who handed over more than £300,000 to pay for so-called “protection” from IRA terrorists. Fellow student Sarah Smith parted with more than £200,000.

Hendy-Freegard’s lawyers argued that a fundamental flaw in the trial was the absence of evidence of false imprisonment. The judge had failed to instruct the jury that this was an essential ingredient of kidnapping.

Although Hendy-Freegard pretended to be an officer, he did not purport to arrest anyone, the court was told. His life jail sentence, from which he was not due to be released until 2013 at the earliest, was set aside.

But he still has to serve the remainder of a nine-year jail term passed in 2005 for fraud and theft.