[1] By making a slight change to his name, purporting to be related to an oil and property tycoon and using a corrupt lawyer, he was able to defraud banks into giving him mortgages on offices with inflated valuations.
[1][8] In the early 2000s, Kallakis and Williams began a new fraud, using various aliases, offshore trusts and fake references to borrow large sums of money to buy prime London properties, often for more than they were worth.
He bought buildings let to the British Home Office in Croydon and the headquarters of the Telegraph Media Group at 111 Buckingham Palace Road in Victoria, which he purchased from the Barclay brothers in 2007.
[1][9][10] He owned 31 Brompton Square, bought in the mid-2000s for £28 million, and had the entire garden dug out to a depth of 30 feet to build a three-storey basement.
[9] He falsely claimed to be an "ambassador for the Republic of San Marino" and the author of Maritime Registries of the World and The Wonders of Italy, and to serve on a committee of the National Portrait Gallery in London.