The Counterfeit Rockefeller

CHARADE

January 2001 - Vanity Fair (Continuation of Story)

In May, Rocancourt, along with Pia, Zeus, and his new assistant, "Joseph"—actually a Brooklyn man named Dante Daniello—moved on to the Hamptons, where they registered at the Pink House in East Hampton. Rocancourt spent his days house-hunting with a real-estate agent, who, investigators say, eventually gave him $108,000 to invest in the stock market; she never saw any of it again. Not everyone he met was so gullible: a woman named Nancy Lorenzen rejected his entreaties to invest with him after a few games of tennis. Lorenzen didn't believe a man of Rocancourt's supposed means would be playing at the East Hampton public court beside the Waldbaum's grocery store.

Rocancourt was a regular at the Palm restaurant in East Hampton, where he smoked Cuban cigars; then he would make the rounds of all the area's busiest nightclubs. During June and July he shuttled among several hotels, including the Maidstone Arms in East Hampton, usually slipping out without paying his bill. Sometime in July he began calling himself Christopher Rockefeller. It was under this guise that he befriended the masseuse at the East Hampton Gym, Corine Eeltink, who gave him $14,000 on the promise he would triple her money. In turn, Eeltink introduced Rocancourt not only to the Spanish painter Gines Serran-Pagan but also to several friends staying with her at a house in Water Mill, where Rockefeller began dropping by to play tennis.

Then, on Saturday, July 22, after Eeltink's father had a stroke in the Netherlands, she telephoned her friend Kevin McCrary and asked him to contact Rockefeller and give him an additional $125,000 she had promised him. McCrary met her at Kennedy Airport, took her instructions, then headed to the house in Water Mill, where he met Rockefeller and his aide, Joseph, and accepted an invitation to join them and a group of friends at a nightclub called NV. McCrary was immediately suspicious. Though the group sat in the V.I.P. section and drank Dom Pérignon, the Frenchman didn't seem like any Rockefeller he had ever met. He had a gaudy tattoo of an eagle on his right arm, bad posture, and a weak handshake. His friend Laurent claimed to be a runway model, but knew little about the modeling world. And Joseph—"Call me Joey D"—was too coarse for words.

"He set me off immediately: How could a Rockefeller be associated with such a bumbling fool?" McCrary remembers thinking. "It didn't fit. Nothing fit. He's French. My family has known the Rockefellers for decades: Nelson, David. We've known them for years. If there's one thing I know, it's growing up around money. He didn't feel like money."

McCrary's suspicions hardened the next day when he and Rockefeller met for several sets of tennis. Afterward, McCrary discovered that his own Hamptons host, a stockbroker named Tom Gregory, had given Rockefeller $50,000. The two men got into a loud argument when McCrary insisted Rockefeller was a fake; Gregory got so mad he wanted McCrary to leave the house. Returning to Manhattan, McCrary went to the 19th Precinct, on 67th Street, and tried to report a crime. A policeman asked where the crime was. McCrary had to admit he wasn't sure.

Instead of handing Rockefeller the rest of Eeltink's money, McCrary engaged in a series of phone calls in which he demanded that Rockefeller return the $14,000 he had already taken. When Rockefeller seemed to drag his feet, McCrary turned to the police in Hampton Bays, meeting them on the night of Tuesday, August 1. It was that night, after sensing that the police were less than enthusiastic about the case, that McCrary tracked Rockefeller down to the Mill-Garth Country Inn in Amagansett.

The next morning two detectives from the Hamptons, Jerry Larsen and Robert Flood, phoned McCrary and asked him to join them on a stakeout at the East Hampton Gym, where Rocancourt had been spotted. There, in an unmarked car parked by a rear Dumpster, McCrary listened as the two detectives made several phone calls in an attempt to pin a provable crime on the Frenchman. When they called the Mill-Garth, they discovered that Rocancourt had left that morning without paying his $8,000 bill. "Ah, there's a crime!" McCrary cried.

They waited. By and by Rocancourt and Joseph strolled out of the health club and walked over to a car; the three men watched as Rocancourt talked with two women—Laurent and Rocancourt's wife, Pia, who seemed to be acquainted. The detectives told McCrary to get out of the car so they could follow Rocancourt. McCrary slipped through a set of bushes and, taking a seat on a bench along Highway 27, watched as the two detectives slowly followed behind Rocancourt and Joseph as they walked into East Hampton.

The two men were subsequently detained and Rocancourt was thrown into jail. Joseph was released and took a worried call from Gines Serran-Pagan, who had scheduled a meeting with Rocancourt that afternoon. Informed that Rocancourt had been arrested, the painter pledged to do anything he could to get him released. In the meantime, Pagan told Joseph, "I will fill the jail with my paintings so that he can sleep quietly in peace."

Placed in custody on charges of false personation and theft of services, Rocancourt gave police a passport identifying himself as "Fabien Ortuna." The next day, after hiring John Gotti's defense attorney, Bruce Cutler, he posted a cash bond of $45,000.

And vanished. Again.

‘Fabien Ortuna" 's arrest and disappearance produced little news outside minor items in Long Island newspapers. It was only after police checked his fingerprints and belatedly discovered he was actually Christophe Rocancourt that the chase began. In the wake of Rocancourt's disappearance, a small army of law-enforcement officials and media organizations mobilized to follow his trail.

By October, after stories in theNew York PostandThe New York Times,the throng included F.B.I. agents and U.S. marshals, as well as crews from NBC'sDateline,ABC'sPrimeTime,CNN, and Court TV. From New York to L.A., most of Rocancourt's alleged victims refused to cooperate. But Charles Glenn opened a thriving business selling Rocancourt videotapes and photographs. A Manhattan private eye on the case, meanwhile, put the price tag for his own stash of Rocancourt photos and videos at $100,000.

Rocancourt began using intermediaries to approach media outlets, includingV.F."I would not consider myself a criminal—I steal with my mind," he told aNew York Timesreporter in an hour-long telephone interview. "If I take things, if that is your definition of a criminal, then I am a criminal.… If they catch me, I will make no deal. I will do my time." He said he felt no guilt over fleecing his victims. "I feel sorry for their greed."

At this writing, Rocancourt remains a fugitive. Everyone involved has a different theory about where he is hiding. Montreal. Paris. Rome. Bangkok. Miami. San Diego. Venezuela. "I can assure you that wherever he is he loves what's going on right now," says Lillian Pinho. "Because of the attention. He loves the attention."

Those who knew Rocancourt remain sharply divided in their judgments. Some want him strung up. Others, like Rhonda Rydell, remain enamored of him even after learning of his lies. Still others have developed a grudging respect for a poor, orphaned French boy who grew up to fleece the rich and the gullible. "He's like Rocky," says Charles Glenn. "He's the Rocky of con men."

"He is not a cold, calculating criminal; I've been around him, I know," says Pagan. "The guy is a dreamer. He walked like a Rockefeller, in an emperor's shoes. He does not belong in jail. The people who gave him money, they belong in jail. For stupidity."

The magazine published a postscript to this article in the November 2007 issue.

Bryan Burroughis aVanity Fairspecial correspondent.