Ronald Coles enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle on the back of a decade-long scam in which he sold people paintings with promises of high returns, and then re-sold the art work multiple times to other investors without telling them or sharing the proceeds.

The paintings, by famous Australian artists such as Arthur Boyd, Brett Whiteley and Albert Namatjira, often ended up with multiple different "owners", none of whom were aware of the others.

As the scam collapsed, Coles deliberately avoided his clients' increasingly desperate demands for their money, much of which had come from their superannuation savings.

When police finally pounced on January 21, 2009, they found 413 paintings valued at more than $6 million stashed in cars and houses owned by Coles and his two stepchildren.

It took a further three years for police to piece together the hundreds of interconnecting transactions, eventually charging him with 87 separate offences in January 2012.

On August 22 the following year, he pleaded guilty to 15 counts of fraud and deception as a director, and to larceny as a bailee, and admitted to a further 18 instances of fraud and deception.

This second suite of charges were taken into account by Parramatta District Court Judge Anthony Townsden, who sentenced the 66-year-old to a minimum of four years, nine months jail in May last year.

Coles is now seeking a reduction of that sentence in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal on the grounds that Judge Townsden failed to consider how the delay between the initial search warrant and the laying of charges had affected him.

He says he was "left in limbo" for three years, despite repeatedly trying to contact police in an attempt to find out what was going on.

"After the police raided the applicant's premises the applicant rang the police and was told they would get back to him," Coles' barrister Samuel Pararajasingham said in his written appeal submissions.

"Months later the police placed a card under the applicant's door and asked him to contact them, which he did. Three years later on 12 January, 2012 the applicant was contacted by the police and notified that he was to be charged.

"The reason the applicant contacted the police was because he wanted to know what was going on and he wanted to know what had happened. The applicant was aware that there were allegations in the press prior to police acting and he had no idea what tack or what the police really wanted."

Mr Pararajasingham said his client had survived during the three-year wait by driving a taxi and writing screenplays, but Judge Townsden had failed to take this hardship into account when sentencing the fraudster, despite being required to do so by law.

One of the small investors who was defrauded by Coles, Darrell Townsend, described the sentence appeal as "ridiculous".

"He was free as a bird for those three years," said Mr Townsend, who was lucky enough to recoup the money he lost in the scam via his bank.

"I can only imagine what sorting through his records must have been like [for the police]. If you've got paintings sold two or three times to different people that's a lot to go through.

"There are a lot of people who weren't as luck as me – never saw a cent of what they were owed. I don't think they're going to be very impressed by this [appeal]."

The matter will return to court next year.