A Melbourne judge in jailing Chris Dawn-Manuel said he represented a "grave threat to the community as a self-absorbed, utterly dishonest individual motivated solely by greed".

Judge Liz Gaynor on Tuesday said Dawn-Manuel's "blatant attempts" to earlier manipulate the proceedings before her in the County Court by presenting "entirely false material" indicated he was a "breathtakingly and brazenly dishonest man who is a hardened criminal".

Judge Gaynor said that through Dawn-Manuel's instructions to his barrister, who she described as "very competent" and blameless, she heard a "heart-rending" tale of Dawn-Manuel's parents and brother being killed in a fishing village in India by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

"You survived with significant injuries, which were graphically described," she told him in her sentencing remarks on Tuesday, "but you were reduced to a life of destitution and penury because all of your family's possessions were washed away and there was no insurance and no extended family to care for you."

When The Sunday Age broke the story in September, it reported that Dawn-Manuel had been painted as "the child left to beg on the streets of Chennai – bullied, branded by gang violence and nurtured on crime – yet he endured for years to scrounge an existence".

Dawn-Manuel even saved enough money to educate himself and complete a degree in India and, from 2010 in Australia on a student visa, achieve another at Monash University.

But as Judge Gaynor said, further police investigations exposed his instructions to barrister Christopher Farrington as "simply a pack of lies".

Not only are his parents and brother alive, but he participated in two sham marriages in Melbourne – with a third ceremony proposed – ran an illegal brothel in South Yarra and forged a psychiatric report for an earlier court.

Doubts about the authenticity of his story first emerged when prosecutor Temple Saville announced at the end of Mr Farrington's plea that investigators had material "contrary" to Dawn-Manuel's instructions.

When the hearing later resumed, lead investigator Senior Detective Simon Hunter stated that throughout the investigation by members of the Heidelberg Crime Investigation Unit it was apparent Dawn-Manuel was "skilled in the art of deception" or "fabricating stories to suit his needs".

Detective Hunter said it was "completely implausible" that as a beggar Dawn-Manuel finished school, attained a degree and then came to Australia to undertake another at Monash.

Instead, he had been "raised in a well-off and respected family", given a good education and the chance to study in Australia but voluntarily committed crimes for his own benefit.

He had shown no remorse for his actions and "continues to fabricate lies and stories to diminish his responsibility and accountability," Detective Hunter said.

Dawn-Manuel, formerly of Clayton South, pleaded guilty to three charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception, three of attempting to do so and one of possessing identity information.

Judge Gaynor jailed him for seven years with a minimum of five years, less 399 days of pre-sentence detention.

In her Crown opening, Ms Saville said that, during 2012 and 2013, he created an identity fraud scam by obtaining information, partly through Optus mobile phone application contracts, which held names, addresses, employment details and contact phone numbers.

He used this information to apply for credit cards online through GE Capital Finance, NAB and ANZ by including accurate personal details of the "applicants", created fictitious email addresses and had the credit cards and PINs mailed to vacant rental properties where he collected them.

Ms Saville said Dawn-Manuel obtained 45 credit facilities with a combined value of $660,500 and tried to get more with a total value of $858,999. He used the fake cards to buy goods and recruited others as "shoppers" to buy for him.

When police raided Dawn-Manuel's home on September 18 last year, they found 48 credit cards and 65 fake driver's licences in various names with pictures attached of him or of the "shoppers".

They also found large amounts of electrical items, designer clothing and shoes, jewellery and assorted bottles of alcohol.

In her sentencing, Judge Gaynor noted that fraudulent credit cards were used about 188 times to buy various items and withdraw cash from ATMs that totalled $452,000.

She told Dawn-Manuel he had organised a sophisticated criminal enterprise and recruited a number of others to "plunder" people's bank accounts, reaping "hundreds of thousands of dollars" - much of it unrecovered - and had further profited by on-selling electrical goods.

The money he generated "went entirely on an affluent and self-indulgent lifestyle" that included buying $400 pairs of jeans, expensive alcohol and "numerous trips to high-end brothels as well as having escorts attend your home," Judge Gaynor said.

Dawn-Manuel had shown no remorse, his prospects of rehabilitation were "virtually negligible" and "ultimately and fortunately you will undoubtedly be deported from these shores," she told him.

The judge noted his offending involved an "attack on people's security and the public banking system" and highlighted the traumatic effect it had on one victim in particular, who had $20,000 removed from his account.

She also congratulated the police "on their extremely thorough" investigations.