Criminal genius led life of gold bars and flash cars

The gold and silver bars Fullerton used as door-stops.

Garry Fullerton is almost 50 and has never held down a job in his life.

Yet the Australian has lived the life of a multimillionaire - buying dozens of homes at a time, drinking $700 bottles of wine for breakfast and using gold and silver bars as door-stops.

Fullerton slipped into New Zealand 3 1/2 years ago on a false passport and set about building the foundations of an elaborate property fraud that once earned him a place on Australia's Most Wanted television programme.

He duped New Zealand banks out of $570,000 before he was caught late last year and sentenced this week to four years in prison.

The 49-year-old has more than 200 known aliases in Australia. His lawyer compared him to the identity-switching conman played by Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can.

But with his long, unkempt hair, glasses and scraggly beard, Fullerton is hardly the picture of a debonair conman.

He created identities, taking names from gravestones or making them up, and forged documents to obtain millions of dollars in mortgages from Australian banks in the late 1990s.

Victoria police said Fullerton was the brains in a gang that obtained mortgages for homes they bought and then sold to their false identities at inflated prices.

They started with rural properties worth around A$50,000 and eventually moved on to metropolitan Melbourne and houses worth up to A$500,000.

The gang obtained A$3 million in mortgages for homes with inflated values and made applications for a further A$2 million in loans. When the fraud was uncovered the banks sold the properties and lost A$1.5 million.

People who should have heard alarm bells when he walked in were blinded by greed, say police.

"He would walk into a real estate agency with a big glass of cognac, a large cigar, the Porsche out the front and the girl on his arm and say, 'I want to buy these five homes,' and would lay $10,000 out on the table - $2000 deposit on each," Detective Sergeant Jamie Templeton, who investigated the Victoria scam, told the Weekend Herald.

"He would say 'I don't care about your rules, conditions. Just get your forms out and I'll sign them.' These people would fall over themselves ... that is where they fell over, the greed."

Giving an example, the detective said the group would buy a home for A$50,000 and then on-sell it to themselves for A$80,000.

The new owner would go to the bank and ask for a mortgage. The gang would find tenants to cover the loan and move on to the next deal.

"They put in 10 applications at a time and worked on the greed of real estate agents and vendors."

When Victoria police caught up with the gang - which included an ex-stripper who would accompany Fullerton on business - they found the ringleader had been living the high life.

His home was full of new furniture, a $25,000 baby grand piano, vintage wine and an intriguing glass bowl with a 2.5m-high flute full of whisky. It was imported from Brazil and cost Fullerton A$5000.

He had also put down a deposit on a A$180,000 Lamborghini, although he preferred to have others drive him.

Fullerton had no money when he was arrested.

"I said to him, 'What are you going to get out of all this? Where's all your money?"' Detective Sergeant Templeton recalled. "He said, 'It's not the end result, I just love to do it while I'm doing it."'

Fullerton had covered the walls of two rooms with notes about his various personas and police spent six months unravelling the "maze" of names.

He convinced a bail hearing he was not a flight risk and then fled to New Zealand on a false passport in 1999.

Police were tipped off that he was living in Orewa, north of Auckland, and, after being extradited back to Victoria, he was sentenced to four years and four months in jail.

After serving less than three years, he jumped parole and headed back to New Zealand.

He set about establishing his identities by obtaining a New Zealand passport, forging payslips and altering bank statements and bills.

He used the false documents to gain a $228,000 mortgage from Westpac Bank to buy a house in West Harbour. He repaid the money with a $342,000 mortgage from ANZ to "buy" the home from one of his other identities at an inflated value.

As both purchaser and vendor, he twice claimed GST on the sales from the Inland Revenue Department.

According to his pre-sentence report, he "acknowledged falsifying documents so well that he managed to manipulate the Inland Revenue Department out of $69,155".

The report continued: "This was a protracted process against an efficient institution, demonstrating an enduring nerve and sustained offence planning."

He took the money from Luckens Rd, paid off Westpac and ran, leaving the ANZ to foreclose on the West Harbour property and lose $127,000 in a mortgagee sale.

He then used an associate to buy a house in Lairdvale Rd, Taumarunui, for $45,000, which he then took steps to buy from the associate at an inflated value of $160,000. He applied to ANZ for a $132,000 mortgage but was rejected.

Detective Constable John Woolford of the Waitakere police tracked Fullerton last December to a central Auckland apartment where $20,000 of gold and silver bars were being used to hold open his bedroom door.

Fullerton has refused to speak to police, but associates told Detective Constable Woolford he would drink $500 to $700 bottles of wine for breakfast.

Police found T-shirts with slogans embroidered in German. One said, "All Priests are paedophiles".

The detective said Fullerton owned an old Mercedes, worth about $5000, with a personalised plate. On the frame of the plate was "Arbeit Macht Frei" - German for "work sets you free" and the slogan atop the gates of Nazi concentration camps.

The Australian policeman Detective Sergeant Templeton said he had been fascinated by Fullerton's intelligence. "If he'd used his powers for good rather than evil, he would still be a wealthy man."

Family members said Fullerton was a "brilliant" child who became bored with school in his teens and left.

Throughout his life he has told associates he is dying of cancer.

"He would say to people, 'I've only got two years to live but I'm going to live them to the fullest'," said Detective Sergeant Templeton.

Fullerton's lawyer said his client described himself as a "hopeless alcoholic" who had never had a job.

Fullerton told Judge Philip Recordon he had become addicted to methamphetamine in New Zealand.

"I became a monomaniac in regards to not only the drug and alcohol, but both."

He said he had undertaken rehab programmes for the first time in his life while he was in prison awaiting sentencing.

Judge Recordon told Fullerton he might kick his addictions if he put the "genius" used in the fraud to legitimate use. He could also use his intelligence to pay back his victims here and in Australia.

Fullerton will be deported once he has served his sentence.

Asked where he would go on his return to Australia, he told the judge: "Norfolk Island may suit me best."