A serial conman put Britain's road-users at deadly risk by taking over 100 driving tests on behalf of dangerously unqualified drivers - while he himself was banned for drink-driving.

Winfred Kodjovie, 37, charged £500 a time to impersonate would-be drivers at driving tests - netting an estimated £50,000.

The hospital worker was sentenced to 21 months in prison for the 39 tests he admitted taking on behalf of other people in the first six months of 2005.

However, it can revealed that between 2003 and 2005 he is thought to have taken an astonishing 110 driving tests, both theory and practical, for other people.

His actions resulted in at least 60 people being allowed onto Britain's roads who may never have sat behind a car wheel previously.

Sitting at St Albans Crown Court, Judge Stephen Warner told him: "You the undermined the integrity of the driving test system in this country."

He added: "The public were put at risk by your conduct by reason of unqualified drivers being able to drive. The fact that as a result of your actions there were no deaths or serious injury is fortunate."

The court heard how the father-of-one was banned for driving for three years in 2003 after he was caught drink-driving for a second time.

Nonetheless, over the following two years he fraudulently took at least 80 practical driving tests, with a 71 per cent pass rate, and 30 theory tests, at a 100 per cent pass rate.

Kodjovie - who came to Britain in 1991 to train as an accountant - exploited a glaring loophole to carry out his scam.

He would book each test in the name of his client, but then claimed his client's properly-obtained provisional driving licence, with photo-identification, had been lost.

This allowed to Kodjovie to make a present a fake identity card - normally a student or NHS card - at the test centre and take the test in his client's stead.

Even when this loophole was closed in July last year Kodjovie brazenly continued scamming.

Now he would turn up at the driving test centre with his client's provisional driving licence - and rely on the examiner not being able to tell that the person in the photo was a different man.

When doing this he would generally take the tests on behalf of black men of a broadly similar age and appearance to himself.

Kodjovie took time off his job as deputy housekeeping manager at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to criss-cross the capital and the Home Counties and carry out his scam.

Often he would take numerous tests in the same day, each time at a different driving test centre and each time posing as a different driver - but always in the same car.

The Driving Standards Agency started investigating him after he attempted to take a test under the name Geirgi Uka in Basildon, Essex in March 2005.

The test centre manager guessed the name was Eastern European and became suspicious when a black man turned up.

A month later he took a practical test in Greenford, west London, where the examiner though he was driving too well to be a legitimate learner.

He was finally caught in June last year when he tried to take three tests in one day.

At an earlier court hearing Kodjovie admitted a total of 39 counts of obtaining, or attempting to obtain, property by deception and one of money laundering.

In addition to the prison sentence, Kodjovie was yesterday disqualified from driving for three years.

The Driving Standards Agency is in the process of revoking the driving licences that Kodjovie fraudulently obtained for others.

Earlier this year the Daily Mail revealed how criminals are 'systematically targeting' driving test centres in order to obtain driving licences.

Last year alone an astonishing 4,830 practical tests had to be halted over doubts about the driver's identity: a figure which prompted Home Office Minister Baroness Scotland said the public was being put at 'substantial risk'.

However, the highly-prized licences are generally not used to get on the road.

Rather they are used by illegal immigrants to access Government benefits, credit cards and bank account.

In September this year bus driver Deeg Mohammed was convicted of carrying out similar fraud to Kodjovie's in which he took up to driving tests for up to 200 fellow Somali immigrants.