To some he is Brisbane's Bernie Madoff, the mastermind of a Ponzi scheme preying on widows, retirees and low income families with false promises of quickly turning small investments into $1 million-plus fortunes.
Others gave him the nickname Teflon Don because of the way he slipped out of sticky situations.
In Australia, where he lived as a fugitive for two decades after arriving in the early 1990s, he went by the name Roberto Coscolluela and ran tax, insurance and investment businesses.
In California in the 1980s, he went by another name: Eminiano "Jun" Reodica.
Reodica was a one-time golden boy of Los Angeles' large Filipino community who came to the US with just a few dollars to his name, worked as a busboy in restaurants and became a civic and media star when he ended up owning a Chevrolet sales empire that became one of America's largest car dealerships.
His Grand Wilshire Group operated 25 car dealerships across California.
But, just like a tornado, the smiling, confident Filipino-born businessman in the nice suits left a trail of destruction wherever he went.
Today, he sits in a jail in downtown Los Angeles.
"He's quite an interesting individual," lawyer Carl Desacola, from Caloundra-based firm TayLAW Solicitors, told AAP.
"He is extremely bright and one of the most resilient fellows I have seen."
Mr Desacola, who is himself Filipino-born, is representing 26 people in Queensland who accuse the man they knew as Roberto Coscolluela of duping them out of between $5 and $7 million, but he estimates there could be up to 500 Australian families ripped off by the 69-year-old.
Coscolluela fled the US in 1988 when his once formidable Grand Wilshire Group was collapsing and popped up in Queensland.
On November 28, 2012, on the eve of civil proceedings in Brisbane's Supreme Court where a widow with two young children alleged Coscolluela pocketed $250,000 in superannuation and insurance payments owed to her after her husband died, Coscolluela boarded a plane to Los Angeles.
His second wife, Letty, was with him and they planned to fly to Canada. But, the flight had a stopover at Los Angeles International Airport and, after decades on the run, the law finally caught up with him.
The mandatory fingerprint check at the LA airport's border control checkpoint revealed Coscolluela as the fugitive Reodica.
US prosecutors have filed a 51-count indictment against him alleging bank fraud and false statements on loan applications dating back to the 1980s.
He allegedly defrauded his Grand Wilshire Group's lenders, which had extended $US300 million ($A333.3 million) in credit lines, of about $US70 million.
His trial is set for August 19 in Los Angeles and he faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Mr Desacola and his clients had heard whispers the man they knew as Coscolluela previously lived in the US before moving to Australia, but they were unaware he was a fugitive until reading media reports of his arrest in LA.
Alleged victims in Australia say they went to Coscolluela, who operated the Richard Gardner Tax Agency in Brisbane, to do their income tax.
He also ran RC Insurance Pty Ltd, which organised insurance premiums, loans for real estate investment and collected rental income from clients' investment properties.
"A number of his former clients have said, `You go to him wanting your tax return completed, he completes it for you and charges you a couple of hundred bucks and you get a refund of $5000 or $10,000'," Mr Desacola said.
"He'd then apparently tell you, `We'll keep the money because what I will do is invest the money for you. The real estate market is booming in Australia and you might be content with only $5000 or $10,000 every year, but I can double or triple your money and make you a millionaire within 10 years'."
While US authorities are prosecuting Reodica, Mr Desacola said there had been no action by Australian authorities despite complaints by alleged victims in Australia.
"My clients have reported him to the Queensland Police, Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Tax Practitioners Board and Australian Securities and Investments Commission but none of them have apparently been particularly helpful in terms of at least properly investigating their grievances," Mr Desacola said.
"The only avenue we had left unfortunately was the civil process."
Queensland Police, citing "privacy reasons", ASIC and the Tax Practitioners Board all declined comment while an AFP spokesman said the agency did not receive a request to investigate Coscolluela.
