Serial Swindlers

This serial con artist who has played many 'catch me if you can' roles, from lothario to surgeon, left a trail of heartache and destruction. His life of crime began with bigamy and included 'selling' a fake business and non-existent yachts. His latest exploits involved posing as a doctor, in order to sell Botox injections and 'designer vagina' surgery to now horrified victims.

This serial swindler also has the dubious title of being Singapore's biggest ever commercial fraudster - stealing a massive $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 a gambling obsession can make a man do. He led a double life as a modest family man and as an international gambler.

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 nor did any of the many and varied investments he managed to convince his high profile victims to buy into.

Giovanni di Stefano was dubbed "The Devil's Advocate" for over a decade of legal work on behalf of notorious clients such Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. In fact, di Stefano had no legal qualifications. Di Stefano has a long and creative history of swindling, with six convictions of fraud and false pretense in Ireland and the United Kingdom, earning him a total of 22 years in jail.

Achilleas Kallakis was known as one of the most audacious characters in the London property market. Born into a modest family of ship workers, he managed to amass a £250 million fortune. Kallakis deployed actors, forged paperwork and faked references to convince a number of banks that he was a global property tycoon. His risky international playboy lifestyle finally caught up to him.

Goldie began his criminal activity at the tender age of 22 when he stole almost £100,000 from the Royal Bank of Scotland. He fled to Australia where he defrauded a large mining company of more than $415,000. Once paroled Goldie decided to start a new life of fraud in Thailand. So far he has convinced more than a dozen people to hire him to be their lawyer, although he has no legal experience.

Posing as a highly successful Scottish bond dealer and claiming to be the son of a Lord, Brown swindled around £36 million out of his victims. As his trail of deceit began to unravel, he jumped bail and fled to the Dominican Republic, sparking an international manhunt for his arrest. He was extradited back to the UK in 2012 and later sentenced to seven years in prison.

Lord’ Edward Davenport a.k.a. ‘Fast Eddie' is said to have made £34.5 million through various frauds, with as many as 51 victims. After being convicted of tax offenses in 1990, he started on a career as a property developer. He was the 'ringmaster' of a series of advance-fee fraud schemes that defrauded dozens of people out of millions of dollars. He was arrested and convicted in September 2011.

Graham Briggs had his first taste of prison for stealing £55,000 from a London-based company. The following year, Briggs made headlines again when he posed as a Concorde pilot to woo a former stewardess before fleeing with £25,000 of her money. Back to jail. Upon his release, he set about unleashing the Swan Fund scam on the unsuspecting, gaining investments worth around £2 million.

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, stealing $16.6 million from the public purse to fund his lavish lifestyle.

David Carroll is one of New Zealand's most prolific offenders of all time. He has more than 130 convictions and so far has been in and out of prison 41 times. He started in his teens by stealing more than £30,000 from his grandmother. Carroll played roles like pretending to be the chef for the UK band Cold Play and he told people he worked for US film star Stephanie Powers.

For 20 years John Keady has seduced women from across Europe and America. He is a callous and vicious conman who is believed to have swindled almost £1 million from his supposed ‘love’ interests. A prison sentence in 2010 was not enough to deter him from committing further fraud and, as soon as he was released, he continued to leave a trail of deceit and emotional damage in his wake.

Selva Carmichael seemed every inch the slick media-mogul, promising to make stars out of Big Brother contestants Lisa Appleton and Mario Marconi and millionaires out of investors in his fly-on-the-wall documentary. From shopping channels where the goods are never delivered to sham property developments, Carmichael seemingly enjoys the thrill of the con just as much as the financial return itself.