DEPENDING on when you met him and, more crucially, how much money you had, he would introduce himself as either Romeo Tony Pacifico or Richard Sambora.

One was his real name, the other an identity stolen, wholesale, from Richie Sambora – the renowned guitarist, songwriter and producer from Hall of Fame music legends Bon Jovi.

Whichever name he used, Pacifico was a consummate fraudster whose deception was a runaway success, swindling more than $25.6 million from banks and businesses.

His con was so good, so complete, that the real Richie Sambora had to retain an Adelaide barrister to appear on his behalf in court and testify his client was in no way involved.

In all, the Adelaide concrete pumper with the stolen name spent 11 years at the top of the charts – and then it all ended, not in a blaze of glory but with a record-setting prison term.

IT’S MY LIFE

Pacifico was born on March 2, 1964 and grew up in Felixstow, an affluent area east of the Adelaide CBD.

Son of Giulio and Caterina Pacifico, older brother to Erica, Pacifico attended a prestigious Catholic school, Rostrevor College, until year 11.

That was the end of his formal education – Pacifico became a concreter and, until 1997, lived a quiet life.

“He was a loving, soft-spoken, hardworking boy,” Giulio recalled in 2008.

For a time he dated a woman named Adele De Dominicis, but eventually married and had a child with Mirella Falso.

The couple’s wedding day was Pacifico’s sole moment in the spotlight to that point – he asked The Advertiser to attend the ceremony and publish their photograph in the next edition.

But things changed when Pacifico started driving a $64,000 Holden V8 ute to work.

More lavish cars followed – a 50-strong fleet of Ferraris, Porsches, trucks, sedans, Harley Davidson motorcycles and a $101,000 BMW 525i.

They had all been purchased by his companies Hard Crete Pty Ltd and Pro-Crete Pty Ltd.

Over the same five-year period, Pacifico’s other business, Luxury Homes, amassed a multi million-dollar portfolio encompassing 12 residential and commercial properties.

Giulio Pacifico immediately suspected something was not right.

“I told him ‘Romeo, how you do that? You build a house and you never sell, you buy property and you never rent it out’,” he said.

“I said ‘where you gonna get the money from to pay it off?’ and he said ‘you’re not gonna teach me what I should do’.”

Erica Pacifico – now Erica Camarinha, married and with a son of her own – was even more confused.

When she accompanied Mirella Pacifico to one of her brother’s properties, a tradesman who was working on it congratulated the pair on “winning the lottery”.

SAY IT ISN’T SO

In August 2002, the family got its answers – and the truth horrified them all.

The National Australia Bank obtained Supreme Court injunctions against Pacifico and two other people, stopping them from selling any properties or vehicles.

The second name on the injunction was “Richard Sambora” and the third was “John Bongiovanni”.

Counsel for the bank were quick to clear up any confusion – all three men, they said, were one and the same.

The Sambora name, they said, had been stolen from Bon Jovi’s guitarist while “John Bongiovanni” was a play on the real name of its lead singer, John Francis Bongiovi Jr.

They said their client had been forced to act because Pacifico had made no payments on any loan.

Pacifico’s fraud had been uncovered by one of the bank’s collection agents – who, sadly, would never receive public recognition for their work – just a month earlier.

The suspicious agent had alerted the bank’s then-asset manager, John Chiarabaglio, who ordered the Pacifico, Sambora and Bongiovanni accounts be cross-referenced.

A subsequent internal review revealed the bank had loaned money against a falsified driver’s licence and fake tax returns, Telstra accounts, builder’s licences and bank statements.

NAB contacted SA Police, who launched an investigation of their own, even as its accountants and lawyers descended upon Sambora’s empire.

One employee, its counsel claimed, caught Pacifico mocking up a driver’s licence in a photocopier – the name on it read “Riccardo Sanboro”.

“He’s obtained all this money through fraudulent misrepresentation, deceit, conspiracy and conversion,” lawyer Mark Hoffman told the court.

His colleague, Michael Barrett, said numerous legal notices had been served on Pacifico but, unsurprisingly, not Sambora.

“As far as Sambora is concerned, there are certain difficulties with service given that he doesn’t exist,” he said.

“It’s the bank’s case that Sambora and Pacifico are the same person, and that it was a fraud against the bank.

“It’s frankly not clear at this stage what’s happened to the money … we anticipate it’s going to take quite some time to disentangle the mess.”

He could not have known it at the time, but Mr Barrett had just displayed a tremendous gift for understatement.

The lawyer was, however, wrong about one thing – Richard Sambora did exist, and he was extremely unhappy.

WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE

More than 13,150km away, in Los Angeles, Sambora – at the time married to actor Heather

Locklear – was promoting Bounce, Bon Jovi’s eighth studio album.

When an enterprising Advertiser entertainment reporter raised the subject of Pacifico during an interview, she discovered the rocker was only too aware of the fraudster.

Imitation was not, in Sambora’s world, the sincerest form of flattery.

“I hope they lock his ass up,” a furious Sambora declared.

Sambora was not alone in his fury – Pacifico was incensed by the media’s coverage of his rapidly-unravelling scheme.

He phoned The Advertiser, demanding to know what right it had to use his wedding photos on the front page.

Notably, Sambora took no issue with the content of the article, nor reporting of the allegations lobbed by the NAB – he felt the photo, taken by an Advertiser photographer, was his property.

In truth, the conman had much bigger problems.

In November 2002, the Supreme Court ordered he immediately repay the $3.6 million borrowed to buy the home he shared with Mirella, or face eviction.

A month later, he was arrested by SA Police’s Major Fraud section and charged with multiple offences of dishonesty and false pretences.

Prosecutor Tim Heffernan urged the Adelaide Magistrates Court to refuse bail and, were it not inclined to do so, asked it imposed strict conditions.

“The reason we seek such stringent conditions is because he is already under investigation for other alleged offences which exceed some $20 million,” he said.

In the end, Pacifico was released – without his passport, banned from approaching international airports and only after he, Mirella and Giulio stumped up $9000 in cash sureties.

He was now answerable to two courts – civil action in the Supreme Court, and criminal action in the Magistrates Court – but another set of gigs was soon added to his tour schedule.

In May 2003, Pacifico made South Australian history as the subject of the first arrest warrant ever issued by the Federal Court.

The concreter had no-showed a compulsory examination of the assets of two of his companies, Luxury Homes and Pro-Crete and Plumbing, and the court was unhappy.

Three months later, he attended court voluntarily – Mirella by his side – and faced the music.

SHE DON’T KNOW ME

The longer Pacifico was questioned, the deeper his fraud went.

“Sambora” and “Bongiovanni” were joined by two other aliases, “Leroy Himms” and “John Leppa”, and they owed money to not only the NAB but also Commonwealth Bank.

“These are just make-up names, names that I just made up,” a dour Pacifico told the examiner.

Then the real bombshell dropped – Sambora was, Pacifico insisted, not an alias at all.

“It’s my legal name, I changed it by deed poll,” he said, silencing the courtroom.

“I don’t use it socially, though. I only use it to obtain finance.”

It was news to Mirella, as her turn in the witness box made clear.

She told the court she had no idea why her husband was calling himself Richard Sambora.

“He forever had people ringing him from the banks, such and such from the bank and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah ringing and stuff,” she explained.

“I didn’t know none of his business side, I didn’t get involved … to me, things were going smooth so I worried about taking care of the house, working full-time and bubs.

“I thought things were going well and we were going well, then the detectives had a talk to me and dah, dah, dah and they were showing me stuff and I was just in shock.”

The examiners showed Mirella a document she had allegedly co-signed to secure millions of dollars in loans for his businesses.

It was dated September 27, 2001 – the day she gave birth to the couple’s son.

“How could I have been in place to sign if I was in hospital after giving birth to my child?” she asked.

Another document asserted Mirella, a State Government clerk, earned $2.8 million a year while a third purported she was a specialist in building and construction.

“I wish,” she sighed.

“I did, like, a beauty course, to do nails and stuff – that’s the only further studies I’ve done.”

The betrayal of her trust continued to mount – one forged signature had been witnessed by a JP she had never met, and she had been named Pro Crete’s director without her knowledge.

“I had no roles, I had nothing to do with the business,” she finally snapped, exasperated and emotional.

“Everything that my name is under or whatever I didn’t know nothing about.

“I’ve had it up to here with everything. I’ve got a child to look after. I just want things to go smoothly. Okay?”

Sadly, nothing would go smoothly for Mirella for quite some time.

In January 2004 she was evicted from the couple’s home.

“The fucking sheriffs are here, they are going to kick us out of the house now – call a lawyer or something,” she yelled at Pacifico, over the phone, as she was forcibly removed.

A year later, Bendigo Bank – yet another of her husband’s unwitting creditors – filed a $500,000 lawsuit against her personally.

Pacifico had purchased a 37m concrete pump, mounted on a Ford truck, in her name and without her knowledge, but that mattered little to the bank.

Eventually, that claim would settle out of court – unlike those against her husband.

LIVING IN SIN

By early 2004, a list of Pacifico’s creditors read like a “who’s who” of Australia’s financial institutions.

First Pacific, NAB, Bendigo Bank, GE, Permanent Trustee and Advance Bank, Orix Australia and Challenge Managed Investments all wanted their money back.

The first order of business for them, and for a certain aggrieved rock guitarist, was severing Romeo Pacifico from Richard Sambora.

The real Sambora hired top barrister Sydney Tilmouth, who dutifully attended the first day of multiple wind-up, foreclosure and seizure hearings.

Mr Tilmouth would sit at the bar table just long enough to state, for the record, his client was not involved – all parties would then agree he could leave, the rocker having been cleared.

The fake Sambora, meanwhile, was arrested again on a further 87 fraud charges, released on $30,000 bail and totally banned from applying for finance – under any name.

In October 2004, prosecutors dropped a 100-page forensic accountant’s report on the doorstep of Pacifico’s lawyers, tracing a $25 million fraud trail from December 1997 through to August 2002.

Pacifico pleaded not guilty in July 2006 and was ordered to stand trial but, in August 2007, changed his mind.

He struck a plea bargain with prosecutors, in writing, confessing to 19 counts of fraud worth $17.5 million, but agreed he should be sentenced on the basis he stole $25 million in all.

“I, Richard Sambora, ask that the following matters, with which I am not charged but which I admit having committed, be taken into consideration when assessing penalties for the offences to which I have pleaded guilty,” it read.

“Between January 1998 and February 2002, I fraudulently demanded property on forged instruments in order to obtain the delivery of cheques from a number of financial institutions.

“The 17 occasions on which I did this are itemised on a spreadsheet which has been attached to this submission.

“The total amount of finance which I caused to be delivered as a result of the offences referred to in the spreadsheet is $7,579,059.80.

“On all occasions referred to in the spreadsheet, I caused a cheque to be delivered on the basis of forged documents provided by me in support of an application for a loan.”

His capitulation was a great relief to SA’s taxpayers – spared the cost of a long and insanely complicated trial – and the Major Fraud detectives who had run him to ground.

Two detectives had worked on the case full-time, two more part-time, and had been assisted by dozens of intelligence officers and the forensic accountant.

The total case against Pacifico spanned 4500 pieces of evidence.

“It was prolific and sustained offending,” Detective Superintendent Des Bray, then head of Major Fraud, told the Sunday Mail at the time.

“The guilty plea represents a timely conclusion to what has been a comprehensive inquiry involving a massive amount of money.

“There are often cases which involve many instances of offending involving small amounts of money, but none have ever been on this scale.”

NO APOLOGIES

It should have been over – but like his rock star namesake, Pacifico held on for an encore.

Just two weeks after his confession, Pacifico was arrested for a third time having been caught deceiving Toyota Finance in relation to nine vehicles valued at $481,853.

He had also scammed Iden Leasing out of two mini loaders worth $71,300.

Pacifico was not about to confess to these crimes, however, pleading to be released on bail.

He was, he tearfully told the Magistrates Court, just trying to guarantee his son’s financial future before he began his “inevitable” jail term.

Pacifico also said he no longer wanted to be referred to as Richard Sambora and preferred “to be called by my birth name”.

The court was unwilling to even countenance bail this time – it was obvious Pacifico would continue to offend so long as he was free to do so – and remanded him in custody.

Four months behind bars smartened Pacifico up and, in January 2008, he pleaded guilty to his most recent offences.

It fell to District Court Judge Wayne Chivell to punish Pacifico for all of his crimes and on March 19, 2008, he handed down his sentence.

The finally tally of stolen money, he announced, stood at $25,639,133 – more than $8 million of which remained unaccounted for.

“These crimes constituted a deliberate, complex and sustained course of deception over years … it was a form of stealing, and stealing on a grand scale,” he said.

As Pacifico stood in the dock, emotionless and handcuffed, Judge Chivell finally solved one of the greatest mysteries about the case – why the fraud had started in the first place.

He said that, by 1999, Pacifico’s concrete pumping business had 12 machines worth $14 million, rendering it “hopelessly over-geared” and unable to meet its debts.

“You wove a web of deceit and, when your once-successful concrete pumping business became a financial quagmire, you robbed Peter to pay Paul,” he told Pacifico.

“You may have felt, in this period, that you would repay everyone – you were wilfully deluding yourself.”

But, His Honour made clear, any hint of altruism was quickly replaced by greed, the desire for luxuries, a lust for fast cars and the means to “fund an expensive lifestyle”.

The only remorse Pacifico felt, he said, was for himself, Mirella and their son.

Judge Chivell jailed Pacifico for 16 years and ordered he serve a 10-year non-parole period – the longest sentence ever imposed, by an SA court, for fraud offences.

It was a just and fitting punishment – but not one Pacifico was willing to serve.

Five days later, Pacifico was again on the phone to the newspaper – this time from prison – determined to share his ire.

“That’s not justice … it’s over the top, I got more than a murderer and more than a paedophile,” he told the Sunday Mail.

“I didn’t kill anyone. I did wrong, but I was trying to pay it back … from the day the trouble started, I was trying to pay back the money.”

Pacifico felt the fault for his offending was misplaced.

“I do blame the financial institutions,” he said.

“In the papers they say there’s $8 million missing – that money that’s missing is fees, charges and interest that I was paying on the money.”

He also blamed the media who had, he said, made too much of his choice of pseudonym.

“It was a joke – a joke that went wrong,” he said.

As Pacifico marshalled his counsel to file an appeal, his parents and sister battled troubles of their own.

THIS IS OUR HOUSE

Mrs Camarinha learned Pacifico had forged her name on financial documents – just as he had Mirella’s – and, when the banks came for her, she lost her home.

“I think it’s an addiction like smoking, or taking drugs, or going to the pokies,” she said of her brother’s fraudulent lifestyle.

“You put $1 in, you get $20 back but then you’ve got to put that $20 in to get that $50 back … he tried to help himself and dug his own grave.

“I lost my house but, in this world, you’ve got to forgive, we’ve got to look that life’s good and we’re healthy.

“What’s happened has happened, we can’t kill ourselves for what he’s done, we just have to move on.”

Five months after their son went to jail, Giulio and Caterina Pacifico faced the prospect of homelessness.

It emerged the conman had forged his father’s signature on one of his many fraudulent finance applications and taken a mortgage out on it.

Then, in a bid to save the house they had lived in for 44 years, Pacifico transferred its ownership – to Adele De Dominicis, the woman he had dated before marrying Mirella.

Drowning in her own debt, Ms De Dominicis was forced to put it on the market.

“I can’t afford it – what do you want me to do, cry for them?” she said when questioned by journalists.

“I don’t want to kick them out but I can’t keep going … he (Pacifico) should never have got a mortgage on his parent’s house.

“His father had worked all his life and he (Pacifico) put them in a bad situation.”

Mrs Camarinha said her parents were devastated.

“Adele is not the victim here, the victims are the poor people who live in that house,” she said.

“My parents will die, they don’t have much life left in them and, if this house is not theirs any more, they’re dead.”

Ever the dutiful son – or having convinced himself he was, at least – Pacifico sprang into action, bombarding Ms De Dominicis with letters outlining a new con he had devised.

Gallingly for authorities, the letters were sent using one of the fax machines in Yatala Labour Prison’s F Division.

Pacifico attempted to instruct his ex-girlfriend on how to convince lenders to approve a $200,000 no-documentation loan for a fake truck and a bobcat.

“It’s just a dummy to obtain approval … they’re examples of what equipment lenders would be looking to finance for $200K,” he wrote.

“So you receive approval for that amount and then pay out existing finance contracts, ie the house … I’m writing to inform you how to repair the situation.”

Wisely, Ms De Dominicis was not interested.

“He’s a number one bullshit artist … I don’t believe half the stuff that comes out of his mouth anymore,” she said.

“A liar is a liar.”

On March 29, 2009, a distraught Giulio and Caterina Pacifico wept as they were evicted from their home.

“They are broken hearted … everything has fallen apart, and they are the victims in this,” a neighbour said.

“They have been swindled out of their own home.”

The tragic scene accomplished something previously thought impossible – it knocked the arrogance out of Pacifico.

He dropped his appeal bid in October 2009 and resigned himself to serving his full prison term.

Pacifico became eligible for parole in March 2017 and has, since that time, kept an extremely low profile.

In a final, ironic twist, the real Richie Sambora now boasts a happier, much more pleasant connection to Adelaide.

He divorced Locklear in 2007 and, in 2014, struck up a relationship with fellow guitarist Orianthi Panagaris – who was born and raised in the City of Churches.

(Produced by Paul Purcell).