Serial Swindlers

Calling himself 'the Phantom', Michaels is a brazen and deluded swindler. His elaborate lies and deceptions began when he was courting his wife, with Michaels telling her he was the son of a millionaire cruise line owner and was about to inherit a fortune. That never happened, and continued to con millions out of his victims. We also hear from the private investigator that helped expose him.

David Ocean is a serial con artist, who has played many ‘catch me if you can’ roles, from lothario to surgeon, leaving a trail of heartache and destruction in his wake. we hear from the police officer who has tracked Ocean over the years, two lawyers who represented him, and even a British backpacker who sailed with him and later had his identity stolen by Ocean.

Giovanni di Stefano was dubbed “The Devil’s Advocate” for over a decade of legal work on behalf of notorious clients. He attracted the attention of criminals and their families who were willing to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for a chance at a reduced sentence. In fact, di Stefano had no legal qualifications. He would use his ‘clients’ money to finance a lavish lifestyle and quirky hobbies.

Nicknamed the “King of Gamblers”, Chia’s story begins with a seemingly modest family man living out a double life of flash cars, and international casinos. Eventually going on to steal $117 million from four foreign banks. His case rocked Singapore not just for the vast amount of money he stole, but because it exposed the dark truth of what an obsession with gambling will lead a man to do.

Achilleas Kallakis was known as one of the most audacious characters in the London property market. Born into a modest family of Merseyside ship workers, he managed to amass a £250 million fortune, repeatedly swindling some of Britain’s biggest banks. In 2012 he was exposed and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Brian Goldie is a Scotsman with a dramatic past and a taste for international travel. At this very moment, Goldie is passing himself off in Thailand as a qualified former advocate in the High Courts of Scotland. But he has no legal qualifications and instead is a convicted fraudster, who continues that take money from unsuspecting expats.

Michael Brown is a convicted fraudster from Scotland. Posing as a highly successful bond dealer, claiming connections with the royal family, Brown swindled around £36m out of his victims. He was extradited back to the UK in 2012 and later sentenced to seven years in prison, extended by a further six months.

‘Lord’ Edward Davenport a.k.a. “Fast Eddie” is a property developer and convicted fraudster. He came to prominence in the late 1980s as the organiser of the controversial Gatecrasher Balls for wealthy, usually privately educated London teenagers. He is said to have made £34.5 million through his various frauds, with as many as 51 victims.

Graham Briggs had his first taste of prison in 1995 when he was jailed for 14 months for stealing £55,000 from a London-based Japanese catering company. After a series of crimes, he finally spent two years in prison in 2009 in France before he walked free and currently has his own PR agent and is back in the UK.

Born Joseph Hikairo-Barlow, this serial swindler created a complex false persona for himself, convincing people around him that he was a Tahitian Prince with a massive fortune and connections to the British royal family. Little did they know that he was actually ripping off taxpayers through an elaborate accounting fraud.

David Nepia Carroll was in his teens when he started living in a fantasy world, spinning lies and stealing from his own family – from his nephew’s piggy bank to more than £30,000 from his grandmother. He now has more than 130 convictions for dishonesty offences and so far has been in and out of prison 41 times.

For 20 years John Keady has seduced women from across Britain and Europe to America. But to dismiss this man as a serial womanizer would be a mistake; he is a callous and vicious conman who is believed to have swindled almost £1million from his supposed ‘love’ interests.

Selva Carmichael promised to make stars out of Big Brother contestants Lisa Appleton and Mario Marconi as well as millionaires out of investors in his fly-on-the-wall documentary. However, the show was bogus and its poorly edited footage that eventually surfaced was simply an accessory, designed to convince investors to part with their cash.