Giovanni Di Stephano Giovanni Di Stephano might just be one of
the most confusing criminals in modern history.
He's been charged with over 20 fraud-related felonies.
He's also represented some of the worst people on earth, such as Saddam Hussein, all while
simultaneously scamming them!
Background Giovanni was born in 1955 in Petrella Tifernina,
a town in Southern Italy.
When Giovanni turned six, his father moved their family to Northamptonshire, England,
where he got a job at a shoe factory.
As an immigrant, Giovanni felt he needed to prove he wasn't just a strange foreigner.
He did so by making several outlandish claims.
When he filled out a local Marquis Who's Who mini-bio, Giovanni wrote that he had recently
obtained a Ph.D. in law from Cambridge University.
He was a teenager at the time.
Early Start When Giovanni reached his 20s, his claims
got larger and more elaborate.
For example, he once claimed that he owned a $200 million videotape business.
No, he didn't invent Blockbuster.
Giovanni took his claims further and made decisions as if he were actually wealthy.
In 1976, when Giovanni was 21, he was sentenced to three years in prison for agreeing to buy
a property with money he didn't have.
The sentence also included other fraudulent charges.
But, to this day, Giovanni claims he wasn't the man who committed the crimes.
Instead, he insists that another man with his name, birthday, and birthplace defrauded
the property sellers.
Apparently, the "evil twin brother" excuse didn't work.
He tried appealing the charges until 1984 when Giovanni was arrested again for fraud.
Two years later, British courts charged him for trying to trick someone into selling him
their property.
The trial lasted 78 days and resulted in Giovanni spending three years in jail.
All in all, Giovanni spent three and a half years behind bars.
And that's not counting the time he spent under arrest for the dozens of fraudulent
crimes he committed, including obtaining property by deception and fraudulent trading.
After an early release in 89', Giovanni needed a fresh start where no one knew his name.
Perhaps someplace he could practice law?
So, that year, he moved to America, where he'd try to pull his biggest scam yet.
MGM Giovanni had big, flashy dreams, so he went
where dreams come true, Los Angeles.
He bounced around different parts of the city before finding an opportunity he just couldn't
pass up: buying MGM movie studios.
There were several bids on the studio currently active, and all of them were in the 8 figure
range.
Despite having almost no money to his name, Giovanni forged a bid that caught the eye
of studio heads.
They accepted Giovanni's proposal.
But when the studio tried contacting this mysteriously generous buyer, he was nowhere
to be found.
Eventually, local authorities tracked Giovanni down and deported him back to England.
The only problem was Giovanni still had legal issues there.
So, he fled to the safest yet most dangerous nation in Europe: Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia was in the process of literally breaking apart.
Revolutions and defections were springing up all around the nation, causing the map
to redraw itself several times from 1989 to 1992.
Giovanni arrived in Yugoslavia in 1992, but the country was still dangerous.
Its infrastructure was partially compromised, meaning investigators wouldn't risk placing
officers in harm's way just to catch a fraudster.
The move was smart on Giovanni's part.
But he still felt like a failure.
So, the down on his luck fraudster began seeking out opportunities in war-torn Yugoslavia.
Warlords And Dictators It took Giovanni five years to find the opportunity
he was looking for.
In 1997, Giovanni used his slightly misplaced confidence to charm Slobodan Milosšević,
the then-president of Yugoslavia.
It's unclear what Giovanni told president Slobodan.
Still, it was enough to earn the former American immigrant a high place in the leader's political
circle.
Giovanni used his access to Slobodan to expand his social circles, eventually leading him
to Warlord Arkan, one of the most infamous individuals in Serbian history.
Arkan was indeed a warlord.
He was also a mobster, bank robber and responsible for leading a genocidal campaign in Croatia.
He hired Giovanni to numerous positions in his organization.
First, the Serbian warlord provided Giovanni with Yugoslavian citizenship.
Then he appointed Giovanni as his official spokesman and business partner.
But it was the third position that meant the most to Giovanni: the position of personal
legal representative.
Remember, Giovanni never spent a single day in law school.
From around 1997 to 1999, Giovanni represented Arkan.
He defended him publicly on many occasions and even helped lead his army, the Arkan Tigers.
Though he never actually saw any combat.
In 1999 things in Yugoslavia were not looking good.
Among dozens of other crimes, Slobodan was being investigated for genocide, and Arkan
was stepping down from his warlord position.
So, Giovanni decided to leave Eastern Europe and head south to Italy, his homeland.
He eventually settled in Rome, where he opened up a law office.
Giovanni's primary clientele, however, came from the UK.
UK Clients Charles Bronson was one of Giovanni's most
notorious English clients.
Many criminal justice experts believe Bronson was, and still is, the most violent prisoner
in British history.
Giovanni also represented another violent criminal named Patrick Holland.
In 2006, Giovanni helped Patrick flee to his office in Rome.
He subsequently arranged press conferences and interviews so his client could proclaim
his innocence.
He was accused of taking a journalist's life.
Giovanni continued representing the worst criminals he could find.
In 2004, he offered his services to serial killer Harold Shipman, who some believe killed
over 250 people.
Shipman, however, declined Giovanni's offer.
Nevertheless, Giovanni still went on tv and conducted interviews as Shipman's attorney.
As you can see, Giovanni loved going on tv and giving interviews.
He hit the jackpot of tv fame when he landed his biggest client of all: Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was constantly
in the news in the early 2000s.
His capture caught the attention of millions of viewers worldwide, who all expected to
see Saddam put to death for his numerous crimes.
Giovanni was one of those viewers.
But, unlike almost everyone else watching these remarkable events unfold, he felt Saddam
needed someone to represent him.
So, not long after hearing the news, Giovanni contacted Saddam Hussein and signed on to
his legal team in 2004.
Giovanni helped organize his defense but did not stick around for Saddam's trial.
Saddam was later found guilty of crimes against humanity, and the rest is history.
The world rejoiced at Saddam's passing.
Many historians consider him one of the most vile political leaders of the late 20th century.
He hurt his own people on numerous occasions and attempted to wipe out the Kurdish people
living in Iraq.
But none of those well-documented crimes kept Giovanni from proudly telling people Saddam
Hussein was a close friend.
And how Giovanni thinks Saddam was a "nice guy."
The Guardian says he's the only person alive to willingly make those claims.
They're probably right.
Chemical Ali Giovanni also represented another Iraqi war
criminal: Saddam's cousin Chemical Ali.
Ali's real name is Ali Hassan al-Majid.
He served as a defense minister under his cousin's regime.
He was also in charge of Kuwait during the Gulf Wars, amongst many other jobs and titles.
In other words, he was important.
Ali earned his nickname after infamously ordering chemical weapon strikes on Kurdish villages
filled with innocent civilians.
He admitted in a secret recording that he personally ordered the attack.
Giovanni joined his legal team in 2006.
This time, however, Giovanni went with his client to trial.
Ali pleaded guilty, somewhat reluctantly, to ordering the attacks.
In 2010, the court found Ali guilty and sentenced him to the same fate as his cousin Saddam.
Robin Hood Giovanni built his business on representing
the worst people on earth.
That was his brand.
And many people in the UK hired Giovanni based on that reputation.
Not every client was a serial killer, gangster, or dictator.
Still, most of Giovanni's clientele came to him with heinous criminal charges.
Like Paul Bush, who was convicted of kidnapping, among other horrible things, in 2003.
He hired Giovanni to represent him after his initial arrest.
Giovanni's first job was to bail Bush out of jail.
Bush's wife paid Giovanni $26,000 in legal fees and an additional $132,000 to secure
her husband's bail.
However, their appeal to bailout Bush was denied.
Typically, an attorney would return the bail money to their client after a judge's denial.
But Giovanni wasn't an actual attorney.
Giovanni only returned a small fraction of the bail money back to Bush's wife.
A similar thing happened to drug smuggler Laurent Penchef's parents.
They hired Giovanni in 2005 when their son got charged with participating in an international
drug-smuggling ring.
Giovanni charged the distressed couple $13,000 in legal fees.
He would, in return, offer Penchef legal advice.
The Penchefs would later testify against Giovanni, revealing that he never gave their son clear
or helpful advice.
He didn't do an ounce of litigation during Penchefs trial, meaning Giovanni never argued
for his client in the courtroom.
Eventually, people other than the Penchefs took notice of Giovanni's suspicious behavior.
One investigator watched him in court and noticed that Giovanni never spoke on behalf
of his clients.
In fact, he wasn't doing anything at all.
In 2006, a British judge ordered Giovanni to verify his legal qualifications before
the trial.
Giovanni, of course, failed to provide the necessary information, and the trial commenced
without him.
No one noticed how odd that was until seven years later when British investigators discovered
that Giovanni didn't have, nor ever had, a license to practice law in the UK.
2013 Conviction A group of Spanish police arrested Giovanni
on Valentine's Day, 2011, in Palma, Spain.
From there, the Spanish police sent Giovanni back to the UK, where he faced up to 75 years
in prison.
The UK prosecutors charged Giovanni with over 18 counts of fraud.
In 2013, they convicted Giovanni on almost every count.
He was sentenced to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to two additional scams he
pulled outside of his law firm.
But there was one charge Giovanni refused to admit guilt to illegally advocating for
people in court.
An advocate is different from an attorney.
An advocate can be anyone with an educational background in law.
Whereas an attorney is someone who has passed their designated bar exam.
Giovanni argued that he was a qualified advocate based on a whimsical technicality.
While Giovanni lived in Yugoslavia, he asked president Slobodan to award him an honorary
law doctorate from Belgrade University.
Slobodan granted his request, technically making Giovanni a qualified advocate.
But because he advertised himself as a lawyer, the honorary doctorate didn't cover the entire
charge of impersonating a legal professional, advocate, or attorney.
His argument raises a question, though: did Giovanni really believe he was a legal expert?
Defending The Indefensible
Giovanni wrote an autobiography called Defending The Indefensible.
He writes, of course, on his life but focuses attention on his life philosophy: defending
the people whose actions cannot possibly be justified.
Outside of his book, Giovanni's made comments about defending Hitler and the devil.
He's proposed a vague hypothetical defense case for Hitler.
And in a public statement, Giovanni asked why Satan shouldn't have a chance as well.
He believes Hitler would have been found innocent had he been tried under some legal loophole.
As for the devil?
Well, we're sure that'd be an exciting reality TV show.
Is it all a ploy to lure in scam victims?
Or does Giovanni actually believe his life philosophy?
One thing is for sure, regardless of whether or not Giovanni believed what he said, he
definitely lived it.
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Let us know in the comment section what you’d rather do, have to use Giovanni Di Stephano
as a lawyer OR have to hang out with OJ Simpson everyday for a month?