Formerly Ireland's richest man, Sean Quinn was sentenced to nine weeks in prison in Dublin on Friday.

'They took all my money, they took my companies, they took my reputation and they put me in jail,' said Quinn following his final hearing.

His journey from billionaire to bankrupt man saw him physically shrink to a shadow of his former self as he spoke to Irish journalists.

According to BreakingNews.ie, the 66-year-old had earlier squeezed into the packed courtroom to hear himself sentenced for his role in a scheme that put his $640 million in international property business beyond the reach of the former Anglo Irish Bank.

Quinn reportedly held a crumpled white handkerchief in his hand and rubbed his brow as the judge read out her findings. Tears fell when Quinn's lawyer told the court he would go straight to prison, without waiting on his Supreme Court appeal.

The inevitability of Quinn's jailing did little to diminish the Irish public’s shock at seeing  Ireland’s former richest man, taken from the Four Courts to Mountjoy jail in a prison van.

Quinn's rise and fall were due to a condition that he himself identified as greed. 'I suppose I was always very greedy. I was never happy with what we had, and I was always looking for new opportunities,' he had once remarked in his heyday.

Placing the biggest financial bet in Irish history on Anglo Irish Bank when he was already Ireland's richest man he stood to become the UK's third richest person with a fortune of $12 billion or more. But the bet failed which led to the insurance business being taken from him by the regulator and eventually the entire company as Anglo Irish Bank sought security over its debts.

According to the BBC, Quinn's decision to sanction, support and add his signature to a plan to take half a billion euros worth of assets back from Anglo bank (which now owned them) was his most ill-judged move.

The Quinn family counters that the 'big case' regarding the legality of Anglo loans needs to be determined first before any action is taken to recover disputed assets.