Catch him if you can

On a grey October morning, behind the tinted windows of a nondescript van leaving Allenwood federal prison in Pennsylvania, sat a man who was used to traveling in stretch limos or anything that spelled “first class.”  Usually, the man traveled in vehicles that made others say, “That guy’s gotta be a VIP.”

In fact, the French-born character often hinted at how important he was: “Rockefeller,” he’d say when asked his name, adding quickly and casually— “But please, call me Christopher.”

"Christopher Rockefeller" was a name that seemed to say it all—  a name that seemed to open all the right doors in the summer of 2000 when the 38-year-old Frenchman swept throughout New York’s Hamptons summer playground to the rich and famous.

And when Christopher Rockefeller burst onto the scene, the new money wannabes were thrilled to be rubbing elbows with an old money name.

Even in the image-conscious Hamptons, Christopher, who always had a gorgeous woman on his arm, still made an impression both with his name and with his money. On a whim, he would charter a chopper to race him out to a seaside estate he said he was thinking of buying.  He was so rich, he could get away with his favorite uniform— jeans, a T-shirt and a baseball cap worn backwards— even in the fanciest places.

Shamin Abbas managed a club where Christopher was a regular. She says once he told people his last name, he didn’t have to say much more.

The young Rockefeller soon became a magnet for the social and financial ambitions of many in the Hamptons.

And that’s exactly what he did when he met Kim Curry and her fiance.  His new friends became his frequent dinner guests at lavish feasts in the latest Hamptons hot spots.

The tabs topped out at thousands of dollars. Christopher always picked up the bill and always paid cash. The bubbly flowed, as did Christopher’s non-stop chatter about his incredibly fabulous world.

The conversation invariably turned to money and whether he had any money making tips for his guests. Christopher had plenty, and even offered his dinner partners a great investment deal.

Kim Curry and her fiancé, who had taken a hit in the stock market that summer, were thrilled. Christopher told them the deal was simple— they put up some money, he would invest it, they would get a tenfold profit guaranteed. So they ponied up the $50,000.

It was Kim’s friend Corrine Eeltink who’d first met the young Rockefeller at a Hamptons gym, noticing that last name and that he’d signed the register with a Fifth Avenue address.

And when Corrine was invited to one of Christopher’s lavish dinners, he’d invited her to make a similar investment — the same sort of terms and the same knockout payoff.

Corrine bought in too. Christopher also promised millions to a real estate agent who showed him a $9 million oceanfront estate in the Hamptons. The realtor was so impressed she gave the French Rockefeller $100,000 of her own savings to invest.

The buzz about it all was impossible to suppress.

And so he swept through the Hamptons like the hottest fashion of the season: a Rockefeller promising a golden end to the summer for the chosen few.

But even before Labor day, the glimmer had begun to tarnish. Despite the generosity he displayed at his intoxicating soirees,  something didn’t seem quite right about Christopher Rockefeller, and people began to ask questions.

Kevin McCrary also wined and dined at Christopher Rockefeller’s table but he passed on making any investments. He wondered, “Why is this Rockefeller coming across with this French accent?”

Instead, McCrary’s suspicions led him to the Internet to check out Christopher Rockefeller.

Then, by Labor day weekend, as quickly as Christopher Rockefeller had descended on the Hamptons, he was gone.

And it wasn’t long before those who gave money to the Frenchman with the blue blood name learned the details of his past— details that would shock even the most jaded of the jet set.

When he disappeared from the Hamptons in that fall of 2000, no one had any idea that Christopher Rockefeller had also once been a social magnet in Los Angeles in the late 1990s. Unlike the Hamptons, where Christopher made friends with new money stock brokers and other graspers hungry for a quick score.

In Los Angeles, Tinsel town, after all, he surrounded himself with a coterie of well known names and faces.

“Christopher,” the paparazzi would shout when they wanted a picture of him leaving the clubs late at night.

The “big show” was recorded in the countless photos and videos of Christopher posing with celebrities. Like British actor Gary Oldman, MTV VJ downtown Julie Brown, or bad-boy actor Mickey Rourke.

Actors like down-on-his-luck Mickey Rourke couldn’t get close enough to Christopher to his money, and to his promises of fame and fortune.  As he did with Mickey Rourke, Christopher said he would help kick boxing action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme with his movie career. And Christopher even talked to Jermaine Jackson about capitalizing on the name of Jackson’s more famous brother, whose autographed picture hung in the Frenchman’s suite. 

And just as in the Hamptons, in money-rich L.A., Christopher never had trouble finding investors. When he said he wanted to open a clothing boutique in Beverly Hills, he invited one woman to buy in — Maria, who would only talk to Dateline in disguise. 

She says Christopher told her he would lend his obvious stature and business genius to the venture...

She would put up some of the money, and they both would reap the easy profits, all this while Christopher dabbled in the movie biz as well. 

The boutique would be located on glitzy Rodeo drive, just around the corner from where Christopher kept a three bedroom suite at $15,000/a week.

So Maria bought in, $50,000, but by the end $200,000.

George Mueller knew Christopher Rockefeller’s history and patterns better than anyone. Mueller is chief investigator for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office and says he knew Christopher by a number of names, other than Rockefeller.

It turns out Christopher Rockefeller or whatever his name was not a millionaire playboy— in fact, Mueller says he was simply a con man, and a good one at that. His game was to change his name and identity to appeal to the victims he culled— from the celebrity-obsessed of Hollywood to the money-hungry society of New York’s Hamptons. And Mueller says once in their confidence, he would go in for the kill.

Mueller says he knew Christopher was conning but didn’t have enough evidence to stop him—so he prepared a search warrant his hotel suite. But as police were ready to move in, as he had done so many times before, the con man simply slipped away.

But when Det. Mueller raided Christopher’s suite, he did find the Det. evidence he was looking for— guns, wads of money, the paperwork for a hundred schemes and illegal passports.

But where was Christopher?

You might think he would have gone into hiding, but that wasn’t Christopher’s style. Instead, he embarked on a rich man’s tour of exotic Asian hotspots with an expatriate pal named Charles Glenn.

In home video taken by Glenn and obtained by “Dateline,” the two men are seen living the high life, in Hong Kong, in Jakarta, in China, and in Bangkok. And as usual, wherever Christopher and his best friend went, they had nothing but the best: the best hotels, sometimes staying in the penthouse presidential suite, having the best transportation — stretch limos with even police escorts, the best restaurants where, despite the language barrier—exotic dishes always arrived to pamper the palate. There was shopping everywhere, buying jade and long chains of gold, and Christopher made sure there was a constant stream of beautiful women at hand.

Over time, Charles Glenn observed, his friend Christopher seemed more and more obsessed with his notoriety— even fancying himself a mafia don.

But apparently, what Christopher really wanted was to get back to his con game.

And so after a month of Asian indulgence, even thought Christopher knew Det. Mueller was on his tail, he made a brazen move: Christopher returned to L.A. and even called Mueller to taunt him.

One month after Christopher returned to L.A.,  Mueller arrested him on illegal gun possession and phony passport charges. But, on the eve of his trial, Christopher made good his promise to Mueller: he jumped bail.

And fled— not out of the country— but to New York’s Hamptons—so he could appear on another stage in his most audacious performance yet.

And so it was in the summer of 2000, while he was on the run from the law in L.A. that Christopher arrived in the Hamptons. It was for this limited-run performance that he borrowed the name Christopher Rockefeller, a Rockefeller who ended up conning all those Hamptonites. It also turns out his game almost ended there too, when he was thrown in jail for not paying a $20,000-hotel bill.

East Hampton police Sgt. Margaret Dunn and, her partner, Lt. Jerry Larsen got the case.

Once again, Christopher talked his way out of a jam.

The East Hampton cops ran their prisoner’s fingerprints to check for outstanding warrants in New York State. There weren’t any. But they didn’t do a nationwide check, so with only the innkeeper’s complaint on the record, bail was set at $45,000. 

It was only after Christopher disappeared that the story of the phony Rockefeller spread like wildfire and made for sensational headlines: That’s when the local police found out Christopher was a fugitive and wanted in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles detective George Mueller was not surprised to learn of Christopher’s latest exploits and expected he would soon be up to his old tricks again.

The question was, where would Christopher wind up next?

The answer: Canada
It was April, 2001, eight months after he ducked out of the Hamptons that Christopher defrauded an elderly couple of at least $100,000 in a real estate deal. The Canadian Mounties got the man everyone was looking for, arresting Christopher at a seaside hotel.

It turns out Christopher had fled straight to Canada from his sojourn in the Hamptons, taking up residence in Vancouver, British Columbia. There, he told the elderly couple he later swindled that he claimed to be a famous race car driver looking to make money in real estate.  

He was arrested by the Mounties along with a woman named Pia Reyes. It turns out Pia Reyes was in fact Christopher’s long-time wife, a wife who claimed then and thereafter that she never knew anything about her husband’s con games. 

Canadian authorities believed her enough to drop all charges against her. Two months before Christopher’s arrest in Canada, while he was still on the run, Dateline interviewed Pia.

At the time she told us that unlike the others who saw her husband as a con man, Pia believed he would return to the U.S. and make it all right again.

Even though Christopher had initially left her and their 5-year-old son in the U.S. while he fled to Canada, loyalty, for Pia, dies hard.

At the time, we pressed her about what she did know about her con man husband...

Was she just another victim of his lies and deceit?

Reyes, a former Playboy playmate, acted in a few Hollywood “B” movies but eventually wound up as a hostess in an upscale LA bistro. That’s where she met Christopher in 1995. 

But Pia learned early on that life with Christopher could change in a heartbeat. Just four months after meeting, they went to Las Vegas, where they did not leave the tables as winners.

That he could. Unbelievably, a few months later they were living in Beverly Hills, and they weren't down and out. Christopher had paid cash up front for a 3-bedroom suite in the lushest hotel in the city, the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

She bore him a son named Zeus, but says that throughout their 8-year marriage, she asked few questions.

Reyes says she never got the “hows” or “whys” of her husband’s business, but that she learned early on and came to accept that life with her quirky husband could and often did change names when the need suited him.

Finally in Canada, Christopher ran our of great escapes. He eventually pleaded guilty to scamming that elderly couple in Vancouver and agreed to return to the U.S. Here, he also entered guilty pleas to the L.A. charges of gun possession and to bribing passport officials —and to fraud charges in the Hamptons.

His sentence was 5 years in prison and court-ordered restitution of $1.2 million dollars to the few victims who came forward.

Too good a deal, says Mueller, who’d pursued Christopher for years.

And so who was he really, this man of a thousand names?

His given name was Christopher, but his family name certainly was not "Rockefeller" — not by a long shot: his real name?

After nearly five years in prison, Christopher Rocancourt’s days as a con man living in the U.S. ended when immigration officials put him on a one way flight back to France—first class, of course.

In 2006, “Dateline” was with him as he jetted back to Paris. Outside the airport, swarms of paparazzi jockeyed for the first photos of the French con man who’d swindled all those rich Americans.

Though he sped away to dodge the French press, but had promised “Dateline” his first TV interview to take place a few days after his return.

So now he was home, the city of lights, and not incidentally the scene of some of his earliest crimes. But there were still unanswered questions: How had he done it, how had he pulled off all those cons, and to make a living now, would he do it again?

Taibbi: How honest are you willing to be with us in the answers you give us?  100 percent?  70 percent? Depends on the question?

Rocancourt had played the game for many years, and except for the one time he pleaded guilty in court, he refused to admit he was a con man— always insisting that his victims were just bad business people who had loaned him some money.

Rocancourt prefers another word to describe his skills: actor.

Rocancourt says he started honing his acting skills at a very early age to conceal his less than glamorous upbringing. He was born in the small French city of Honfleur on the Normandy coast. Rocancourt never told anyone, not even his wife, that his father was an alcoholic who froze to death on the street, and that his mother was a sometime prostitute.  Rocancourt was abandoned at age five, and grew up an orphan at the children’s hostel of San Germaine.

Dateline was with him during his first visit in 25 years.

But a lot of questions remain about his early years. While we know his story of growing up in an orphanage is true, once he ran away, it's impossible to know whether the details as he tells them are fact or his own invented mythology.

For example, he says at 23, his first really big score, forging a deed for a Paris building he didn’t own and then selling it!

He had discovered the kind of crime that would define his life— he would be a con man, eventually taking on many different identities, including Christopher Rockefeller, a name that he says just “popped into his head” as he signed the guest register at a Hamptons gym.

A Rockefeller with an accent so thick you sometimes need subtitles to understand him.

And whether he was playing the role of a Rockefeller in the Hamptons or a movie producer in Hollywood, Rocancourt says he always used the same simple bag of tricks to lure his potential victims: champagne dinners at an expensive restaurants,  and the unmistakable impression that the guy who always reached for the check, always, had to be absolutely loaded.

He says he always counted on his victims thinking they were taking advantage of him, and that he always counted on their greed.

But you still had to wonder, and we did: whether this con man is like the high stakes gambler who once exalted that "Money you earn is never as sweets as money you win" and whether this con man will simply miss the con too much to stay away.

George Mueller, the L.A. investigator who tracked Rocancourt’s con man career isn’t buying it.

The ultimate con: celebrity
So what does a convicted con man do for an encore?

Given the French appetite for his story, he was about to pull off the ultimate con— turning his celebrity as a criminal into a money making venture.  

Dateline doesn’t pay for interviews, but Rocancourt had a team of media handlers selling the rights to his story to the French media. There were the first photos of the phony Rockefeller for sale, the first print interviews, the first French TV interview — which an entertainment show got.

And while he was in prison, he wrote a best seller: “I, Christopher Rocancourt, Orphan, Playboy, Prisoner” (English translation). The deal for a second book, “Christopher Rocancourt, My Lives” was signed within days of his arrival. He even sold the rights to his name on a clothing line, Rocancourt Jeans.

In fact, Rocancourt is being treated as something of a national hero, the solitary French rogue who beat the big bad rich Americans at their own greedy game.

When you spend time with the con man as we did, you can see how his charm and his fast moving tongue talked a lot of people out of a lot of money— and it makes you wonder if, for this former orphan-turned-millionaire, crime did pay.

So could a self-professed reformed con man go legit and keep making big money while staying out of trouble?

As always, Rocancourt still had some surprise cards up his sleeve.

The Cannes Film Festival: Where sex and celluloid meet on the French Riviera and papparrazi cameras light up the stars of the moment.

And on the red carpet, arriving celebrities are hailed by first names only. “Angelina,” “Brad,” the photographers shout.

And "Naomi" -- as in Campbell.

And this year there was a new name on the red carpet: "Christopher," they shouted.

Can you believe it?  Christopher... as in Rocancourt.

There he was dwarfed by the towering supermodel Naomi Campbell, her hand locked on his shoulder.

Since his return to France two years ago, Rocancourt has become a big celebrity, and Cannes was just one of the subjects Christopher was all too happy to talk about last week in Paris.

But the orphan-playboy millionaire-conman was not just another storyline for the tabloids as Naomi Campbell's escort.

Far from being just a supermodel accessory, Christopher was in Cannes to launch a new role in his life: believe it or not, as a movie actor.

Which pretty much sums up his life story, as long as you include money in the motivational mix.

Two years ago, we could barely contain our skepticism when he first told us he wanted to act, but a well known French director matched him up with his co-star and red carpet partner Naomi Campbell in a movie called "Bad Love."

Now the clips from Christopher's audition tape might not have Hollywood directors running after him with new offers, but the French director who hired him is known for casting people with no acting experience -- and for graphic love scenes.

The movie's plot, Campbell as a movie star who has an affair with an imposter, played by Rocancourt. Not much of a stretch for either co-star.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg of Rocancourt's growing celebrity in France.  His own life story as a conman with any number of phony names will be another movie, called “A.K.A.,” police jargon, of course, for... “also known as.”

The producer, Thomas Langmann says his inspiration for the movie came from "Dateline."

But Rocancourt, now 41, won't play himself in his own story.

Still, there's no shortage of other projects for the aging conman.  He recently published his third book in France, and his third best seller called "Hoaxes."  And just this week, Christopher Rocancourt turned up on French television in an unlikely role: TV show host. Christopher is now anchoring a series of television shows for French National Geographic.

But don't go adding the description “reformer” to Christopher's resume just yet. He still owes more than a million dollars in restitution to his U.S. victims as part of a plea agreement. And even though he's been making money hand over fist, his victims shouldn't be looking for that check in the mail anytime soon.

L.A. Detective George Mueller bristles at Rocancourt's recent success saying it reflects a pathetic fascination by the public, both the French and American public, that glorifies criminals.

Mueller predicted two years ago that Rocancourt would eventually go back to a life of crime. It seems it hasn't happened so far.

But Mueller says that in the big picture while Christopher may be making money now, crime, for him, did not pay.

And while Rocancourt's business life has been a success, his private life has not.

He divorced his wife Pia, the mother of his son Zeus.  And since coming home to France, has had a very public relationship with the former Miss France, Sonja Roland.  They had a child together, a little girl named Tess. But Rocancourt ended that second run at domestic happiness when he walked out on Roland and their baby. He says he continues to see both of his children and to support them.

But Rocancourt has never been much of a stay-at-home dad. And while he complains about the loss of privacy now that he's bold face name in France, a day in the life of Christopher Rocancourt is hardly an attempt to stay out of the public eye.

It usually begins at a Paris see-and-be seen restaurant, one time at lunch with another former Miss France, another budding actress. In the afternoon, the wannabee movie star shows up at the most chi-chi gym in Paris to battle the bulge like any other over-indulged Parisian star.

Of course his trainer and constant companion is also a former world champion kick boxer.

Later in the day, meetings with another screen writer, and then off to a bistro where he and his entourage take the center table in a room frequented by French intellectuals.

Not a bad life for an ex-orphan and ex con man.

And Rocancourt's bravado seemed to hit new heights last March when he attended an award ceremony for a filmmaker friend at the Elysee Palace, the French equivalent of the white house.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy was there to do the honors.

How do you explain it? A convicted felon in the U.S., now a famous French celebrity rubbing elbows with his government's top officials.

Others joked that they're glad to meet him here and not in prison.

When he left the palace, reporters asked him if he talked to president Sarkozy.

And after this visit, he says he thought about another career once the acting roles dry up, although he might be conning us again.

But Det. George Mueller, Rocancourt's long time nemesis, is not amused.

Sad for Mueller, but amusing for Rocancourt, a man who still thanks the country he adopted for a while, the U.S.,  for letting him live the American dream as Christopher Rockefeller, while pulling off the great American con.