Arthur Engoron, a cabdriver-turned-judge who found Donald Trump liable for fraud, did not hold back in accusing the former US president of trying to take him for a ride.

In ordering Trump and his family business to pay a $355 million penalty, Engoron displayed the wit, humour and disbelief he has often shown in more than three years overseeing the civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump, including a trial spanning three months.

"The English poet Alexander Pope first declared, 'To err is human, to forgive is divine,'" Engoron wrote near the end of his 92-page, single-spaced decision.