Christophe Rocancourt

Impostor and con artist who scammed affluent people by masquerading as a French member of the Rockefeller family. He told Dateline NBC (1992) in a 2006 broadcast that his mother sometimes worked as a prostitute and his father was an alcoholic who took Christophe to an orphanage when the boy was 5. He ran away and made his way to Paris where he pulled his first big con: faking the deed to a property he didn't own, then "selling" the property for USD $1.4 million. Making his way to the United States, Rocancourt used at least a dozen aliases. He got the rich and powerful to invest in his schemes, he told "Dateline NBC", by tapping into their greed. He convinced them that he, too, was rich by paying for their lavish dinners in cash. In Los Angeles, he pretended to be a movie producer, boxing champion or venture capitalist. He dropped names like "his mother" Sophia Loren or "his uncles" Oscar de la Renta and Dino De Laurentiis and was associated with various celebrities. He married Playbo